ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Evils of Westernization Supplement 4 To achieve control of the machine, one must build it. Something built by another-even if it is a charm or a sort of talisman against envy-certainly carries something of the unknown, something of fearsome "unseen worlds" beyond human access. It harbors a mystery.

The one who carries that talisman does not possess it but in a sense is possessed by it in living under its aegis, in taking refuge in it and living in constant dread of giving it offense. (pp.

79-80) According to Jalal, the main reason for Iran's occidentosis is the mode of thinking which says: "Now that we are an oil-producing country and the European brings us everything from soap to nuts on a silver platter, why should we go to the trouble of building factories, heavy industry, with all the attendant problems...." (p.

81.It is due to this way of thinking that almost the entire oil income goes to the West: The Westerners extract, refine, transport, and compute the cost of the oil themselves and figure our annual share at, say, forty million pounds sterling, given us as credits toward purchase of their manufactured goods and deposited in their own banks in our accounts. We are necessarily compelled to return these credits by buying from them. Who are they?

Forty percent is America and its satellites, 40 percent England and its adherents, and the rest, France, the Netherlands, and other Western European nations. In return for the oil they take, we must import machines, and in the wake of the machines, specialists in the machines, dialectologists, ethnologists, musicologists, and art historians. (pp.

83-85) In this context Jalal refers to the under-the-counter transactions, which sometimes involve estimable Orientalists like Peter Avery, a fellow of the reputed Cambridge. It came as a revelation to Jalal that people are similarly small around the world. In 1962 Iran had thirty thousand foreign experts, engineers and specialists. This number multiplied in the coming years under de facto American rule.

The seventh chapter entitled "Asses in Lions Skins, or Lions on the Flag" is a vivid description of occidentotics, and is relevant to all countries and nations under the spell of Westernization. The term Gharbzadegi was actually coined by Ahmad Fardid, as Jalal himself acknowledged, but it would have .lapsed into obscurity were it not for Jalal's book. This chapter forms the core of the book.

✦ ✦ ✦