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Two of the world’s foremost proponents of and experts on theocracy come together for the first time!
Blake Archer Williams grew up in the USA in a Christian Iranian immigrant family, studied Islamic history with Professor Hāmid Algar at the University of California at Berkeley, converted to Shia Islam, and later moved to Iran. He is the author and translator of over 50 books on Islam generally, and on Shi’a Islam in particular, including C redal Foundations of Waliyic Islam.
Peter Simpson is the author of “Theocracy’s Challenge” and Political Illiberalism: A Defense of Freedom among other works. He is professor of philosophy and classics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
What kinds of questions will Peter Simpson, America’s leading critic of political liberalism and advocate of theocracy, pose to Blake Archer Williams—who not only thinks extensively about theocracy, but also experiences it in practice in the Islamic Republic of Iran? Listen and find out.
Theocracy my ass. Iran is more democratic than the US. Which ain’t sayin’ much. But it is.
Peter Simpson argues for theocracy against secular liberalism on the grounds that theocracy produces more freedom. Secular liberalism produces a Leviathan state with a monopoly on coercion, which is the definition of tyranny.
Iran is a theocracy in the sense that its system is based on a firm belief that the only true ruler or sovereign is God. But it also has a democratic component (president, parliament, elected experts pick the Supreme Leader). I agree that it is more genuinely democratic than the USA—because, not in spite of, its being a theocracy.