ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Evils of Westernization Supplement 5 As the five preceding chapters are a prelude to the main theme of occidentosis elaborated in the seventh chapter, the remaining four chapters, from the eighth to the eleventh, form a sequel to it. "A Society in Collapse" is again an account of the tyranny of the machine, in the wake of which the armed forces emerge as the final arbiters.

Jalal has described various wings of the armed forces in terms of their utility for the oppressive regime and its subservience to its Western masters. The ninth chapter gives an account of the pitfalls of the West-oriented educational system and its irrelevance to Iranian society and people. The educated class was a typical breed of occidentotics; all its activities and products lacked any sense of purpose and direction.

Some passages from this chapter can be quoted to serve as an index for the study of the occidentotic elite of other similar countries: With very few exceptions, the sole output of these colleges over the last twenty or thirty years has consisted of distinguished scholars, all of whom know the language, know some biography, are scrupulous workers, write marginalia in others' books, resolve tough problems in language or history, determine which graves lack tenants or which figures lack graves, explore the mysteries of Sura an-Nahl, know who is citing or plagiarizing from whom as much as a thousand years ago, and write treatises on the poets of the tenth century of the Hijra, whom one could count on the fingers of one's two hands.

Worst of all, most of them become teachers of literature, educational directors, or civil judges. Bless this last group, whose members have given some underpinnings to the Justice Ministry and some meaning to the idea of the independence of the judiciary and who well distinguish truth from falsity, if conditions allow. But what of the others? All in all, what benefit have we realized from them, besides a deeper plunge into occidentosis?

All these professors and their carefully trained pupils, with their ears stopped like Seven Sleepers', have retreated so far into the cave of texts, textual variants, and obscure expressions that even the roar of the machine cannot awaken them. Rather, they have plastered these texts to their ears to avoid hearing these most loathsome of sounds.