The Evils of Westernization

Preface

Mizan Press, Berkeley, Contemporary Islamic Thought Persian Series (1984), 5.

  1. Occidentosis (Gharbzadegi) is Jalal Ali Ahmad's tryst with the infinite world of ideas, for which the scene is set in twentieth-century Iran and the background is provided by the vast panorama of the East faced with the onslaughts of the Western civilization. The first draft of the book in Persian was presented at two of the many sessions of the Congress on the Aim of Iranian Education, on 29 November 1961 and 17 January 1962 in the form of a report, but it did not find a place in the proceedings of the Congress due to its critical nature.

The first one-third part of Gharbzadegi was published in the periodical Kitab-e Mah causing the suspension of the journal. The author published it as a separate work privately in 1341/1962. Since its publication the book has been discussed, criticized and analysed heatedly both in Iran and abroad. It is acknowledged by both admirers and critics as a work of unique significance because of its content as well as its approach.

R. Campbell has done a commendable service to contemporary Islamic thought by rendering the book into English.

Hamid Algar, a specialist in the field of recent Iranian thought and politics, has greatly enhanced the value of the translation by adding well-researched scholarly notes to it. The notes by Algar are both informative and corrective, for Jalal Ali Ahmad, being not a historian and a meticulous researcher, had committed certain errors that needed to be pointed out for the sake of providing readers with more accurate and definite information about the events referred to in the book.

Algar has done the editorial job with superb competence.

Jalal Ali Ahmad is one of the most eminent figures of contemporary Persian literature, basically a fiction writer, but nevertheless an equally important ideologue of modern Iran. In many respects he is a precursor of Dr. Ali Shari'ati, who, despite exercising far greater influence than Jalal on the youth, could not surpass Jalal Ali Ahmad in literary excellence.