On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher discussed the potential that, if Iran has free elections, it elects religious fanatics like Egypt and Algeria did, and said that, despite what the “ruling class” in the West pretends, “a lot of people in those societies want a theocracy.”
Maher said, “I think Islam needs a reform, a lot of people have been saying that since 9/11.”
He added, “And maybe this is the place where it starts. This is not an unsophisticated society, and a lot of the people there do want to live — obviously, we’re not asking you not to be Muslim. We’re just asking you not to be a theocratic state. My question is, if we did take — if the best part of it happened and Iran is now a democratic state, and they can have free and fair elections, what if the wrong people win? Because that has happened before. Egypt, remember the Arab Spring? And then Egypt had free and fair elections and they elected the Muslim Brotherhood. That’s that second picture of that crowd who likes the regime. Algeria in the nineties, same thing happened, free and fair elections, they elected the wrong people, and by the wrong people, I mean the religious fanatics. It’s very easy to pretend, like the ruling class likes to do in the West, that it’s just a few bad apples, but, actually, a lot of people in those societies want a theocracy. Then what do you do?”
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