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(bismillah) (salam) I hope you are all in the best of health and most firm in your Imaan. The separation of the Church and the state has been a matter of profound debate over the past few centuries. While I'm not here to discuss the issue in general - because that has been done to death already - I did find a particularly interesting video on the matter: https://youtu.be/EbUUNonUgE8 You can skip to around 3:40 for the relevant part but I would suggest watching the whole thing. Anyways, the part which piqued my interest most was when the scholar argued that hypocrisy is a natural product of an ideological state and that even in the time of the Prophet himself, this is something that could not be countered or mitigated, regardless of how perfect the ruler might be. This was particularly interesting for me and there are two aspects of this that I would like you guys to discuss and give your opinions about: 1. Is hypocrisy, as he states, a natural and inevitable product of an ideological state, such that in a secular state the problem would not exist at all? 2. This argument implies that even the Prophet's rule was not perfect. Now, we all know that it was, indeed, not perfect as there were bad people and so on but we mostly interpret that as a problem resulting from the bad people and that the system itself was perfect in and of itself (just like God created a perfect system but evil exists because of the people, to give a relatively similar analogy). This argument, however, claims an imperfection within the system itself. Do you agree or disagree? Or, would you just argue that this is an example of a problem resulting from the actions of the people and not a fundamental flaw in the system itself? Thanks.