Lecture given at BRISMES Conference, 6-9 July 1997, St Catherine’s College, the University of Oxford
ORIENTALISM
In his famous and highly influential book Orientalism, Edward Said describes Orientalism as ‘a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient’.[1] He speaks of Orientalism as having developed a life of its own and having its own internal consistency, when a ‘formidable scholarly corpus, innumerable Oriental “experts” and “hands” and “Oriental professorates” created a “complex array of Oriental ideas” (Oriental despotism, Oriental splendor, cruelty, sensuality), many Eastern sects, philosophies, and wisdoms domesticated for local European use…’[2] According to Edward Said ‘It is hegemony, or rather the result of cultural hegemony at work, that gives Orientalism the durability and the strength I have been speaking about so far.’ [3]
Although one may not agree completely with Said’s bold generalisations about Orientalism – and, interestingly, he is mainly dealing with Western responses to Islamic and Arabic studies, with minor, passing references to great scholars of Persian, like E G Browne, R A Nicholson and A J Arberry – nevertheless, one cannot argue with the main thrust of his thesis that Orientalism is concerned with how the West sees the Orient, rather than how the Orient exists in reality or how the Orientals see themselves. Edward Said’s vision, influenced by Antonio Gramsci’s idea of culture as a form of subtle domination by the ruling classes [4] and Michel Foucault’s notion of culture as discourse and his insistence on finding a genealogy for knowledge in institutional contexts [5], contains important insights.
One can argue that the reverse is also true. The way that many Eastern people, especially Muslims and Iranians, have seen and continue to see the West is not how the West is in reality, but how the Easterners would like to see it or have been forced to see it as the result of two centuries of Western domination and colonialism. We are all victims of our past and our circumstances. We see the world from where we are standing, and there is nothing else we can do. Therefore, the West saw the East with a Western bias and vice versa. To this observation should be added the unequal relationship which has existed between the East and the West during the past few centuries, and especially the present cultural, political, economic and military domination of the Middle East by the West.
In the West, Orientalism is considered to have commenced its formal existence with the decision of the Church Council of Vienna in 1312 to establish a series of chairs in Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac at Paris, Oxford, Bologna, Avignon, and Salamanca.[6] The suggestion was Raymond Lull’s, who advocated learning Arabic as the best means for the conversion of the Arabs. Chairs in Oriental languages had been founded at Paris, Louvain, and Salamanca by 1311. Still, all of them suffered from a lack of teachers and reliable source material, and their interest was mainly in the means of propagating Christianity in the Islamic lands rather than in learning from the East.
The serious study of Orientalism started only in the seventeenth century, and the proper interchange between the academic and the more or less imaginative meanings of Orientalism dates from the end of the eighteenth century. In 1632, the Thomas Adams Chair of Arabic was established at Cambridge, and four years later, Archbishop Laud established a similar chair at Oxford. Interestingly, most of the famous holders of the Thomas Adams Chair of Arabic turned out to become Persian experts who devoted most of their time to Persian studies; from Professor Storey with his erudite bibliography of Persian literature, to E. G. Browne the greatest Western scholar of Persian literature who was also very interested in several religious, mystical movements, to R. A. Nicholson the great translator and interpreter of Rumi and Persian mysticism, and to Professor A. J. Arberry with his numerous works on Rumi, Hafiz, Omar Khayyam and others, were mainly scholars of Persian.
The same story is true to some extent in Oxford. One of the most distinguished early English orientalists was Thomas Hyde (1636-1703) of Oxford, who became Professor of Arabic and Librarian of the Bodleian. Although a Professor of Arabic, one of his main interests was in the ancient Persian religion of Zoroaster. At about 1690, he had translated into Latin the first Ghazals of Hafiz. He is also to be credited with the first translation of a Ruba’i of Omar Khayyam. The first reference to Omar Khayyam is in the form of a quatrain attributed to Omar’s ghost, who recited it in a dream to his mother, recorded in the History of the Religion of the Ancient Persians, Parthians and Medes, by Dr Thomas Hyde in the year 1700.
IRANIAN CONTACTS WITH THE WEST
The first serious Iranian writings about the West, and particularly about Britain, also date from the eighteenth century. Of course, the history of contact between Persia and the West goes back a long way. Apart from long contacts between the Persians and the Greeks, there are many stories which link Iran with Western Europe since the dawn of history. Starting from the earliest phases of Judaism, there was a great deal of physical and spiritual contact between the Hebrews and the Persians. The Bible contains many references to Iran, Iranian history and Iranian kings. 14 books of the Old Testament have either directly dealt with an event which has happened in Iran, or contain references to Iran. [7]
There was also a close connection between Christianity and Iran. The story of the three Magis or Zoroastrian priests visiting the newborn Jesus is well-known. It is not, however, generally realised that Iran also played a leading role in the spread of Christianity. Many Christian churches were established in Iran when the Christians were still savagely persecuted by the Roman Empire. [8]
According to legend, the first Persian to visit the British Isles was a certain bishop of the Nestorian Church named Ivon. In the sixth century, when the Nestorians were sending missionaries to India and China, Ivon is supposed to have travelled in the opposite direction, to England, and to have resided there until his death. When a ploughman in the county of Huntingdon turned up his bones in the year 1001, the bishop straightaway became a saint and gave his name to the Church of St. Ives, built on the spot. [9]
In more historical times, the main motive of the first Persian sent to the West was more political. He is one of the suite of an envoy of the Ismailis or Assassins of Alamut. In 1238, he came to the courts of Paris and London during the reign of Henry III. He was sent by the Persian ruler Ala’ud-Din Muhammad to seek English help against the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan. However, he received no encouragement from either source. As recorded in the travel accounts of William Rubrick, the Bishop of Winchester had taken the cross at that time. Being present in the audience, he exclaimed:
Let those dogs devour each other and be utterly wiped out, and then we shall see, founded on their ruins, the Universal Catholic Church, and there shall truly be one shepherd and one flock.[10]
The interest in Persian studies developed due to greater commercial and political interests between the West and the Safavid and Mughal governments. The works of travellers, merchants and diplomats such as Anthony Jenkinson (1562), Thomas Alcock (1564), Richard Cheney (1564), John Newbury (1580) and Ralph Fitch (1583-91), the three English brothers Sir Thomas, Sir Anthony and Robert Sherley [arrived in Qazvin in December 1598] who stayed in Iran for a long time and even acted as Iran’s ambassador to various European courts, Jean Chardin and Tavernier from France, that the West was introduced to Persia.
Sir Anthony Sherley, who, along with his brother Robert, had many audiences with Shah Abbas – “the Great Sophy,” as they called him – claims that it was he who persuaded the Shah to seek an alliance with the Christian princes of Europe against the Ottomans. Six months later, he was a member of a Persian mission to visit England and some other European courts. The mission included Husayn Ali Beg Bayat, often called Iran’s first ambassador to England. One of the strangest episodes in Anglo-Persian relations was that, while the Persians sent an Englishman as their ambassador to Europe, a few decades later, in 1798, the British sent an Iranian, Mehdi Ali Khan, as their ambassador to the court of Shah Abbas. [11]
It was during the Safavid period (1500-1722), too, that the Iranians gained first-hand familiarity with the West. It should also be borne in mind that it was not only as a result of the visit of Western merchants and diplomats to Iran that Iranians came into contact with the West. Many Iranians used to travel to the Caucasus and to Russia, many visited the Ottoman Empire, which had greater access to the West, and many more visited India, where there was a strong and growing British presence.
The reaction of the Iranians to the West was, of course, influenced by Iran’s changing circumstances during various centuries. One difference between the Iranian and Indian reaction to the West was that while India became a British colony, Iran remained nominally independent. However, unlike most other independent countries, Iran came under intense foreign, especially British, influence. While former colonies had direct experience of colonialism, and once they had ended the period of colonial rule, they knew that this period had ended and they had achieved independence, for a country like Iran, which lived in a twilight zone of being under foreign domination and intrigue, without being directly a colony, the situation was different. The reaction, therefore, was much more complex and prone to the acceptance of conspiracy theories. There was no time when the people felt that they had achieved full independence. Therefore, a feeling of resentment and a suspicion of foreign hands behind all events persisted.
The early accounts of the West were not the result of direct experience of the Western way of life, but depended on interviews with Persian-speaking Europeans, or were written by Iranians who could speak European languages and who had come into contact with the Europeans as equals or were in the service of Europeans. The question arises, moreover, to what extent the picture derived of Europeans reflected European realities and to what extent the self-image of their informants or even the self-image of Iranians as reflected in their impressions of the Europeans.
ABDUL-LATIF KHAN OF SHUSHTAR
One of the earliest works about the West is by Abdul-Latif Khan of Shushtar. He was born in Shushtar in southwestern Iran in 1760 and emigrated to Hyderabad around 1790. He was about 30 when he emigrated to Hyderabad (Deccan), where a cousin occupied a high place in Nizam’s Court. It was based on the notes that he took during that decade that he based his Tuhfat al-’Alam (Gift to the World), written in 1800-1801. The book was printed in Hyderabad in 1805.[12] Shushtari praises England for being less hierarchical and more egalitarian than Iran or India. He is equally impressed by the independent power of the courts. He writes: “Another of the laws of these people is that no one may dominate another. If the king or nobles make unreasonable demands on their subordinates, these latter may lodge a complaint in the courts.”[13] With an eye on the need for democratic reforms in Iran and India, Shushtari refers to the constitutional power of the British monarch and how this has led to stability in society. His description of parliamentary government is one of the first to appear in Persian. He provides a rather idealised view of the British monarchy by observing:
“The philosophers, after having implemented most of the above-mentioned laws, began thinking about how to organise power. Until that time government was absolutist and autocratic. Every day, a ruler was deposed and another achieved dominion through conquest. The turmoil and bloodshed attendant upon changing regimes became apparent. The king at that time was himself a learned man and shared the prevailing opinion among the philosophers. They thought for many years on this issue. In the end, all arrived at the opinion that the king should be deprived of his power and that they should appoint for him an agreed-upon amount… The king, in addition, was willing to become powerless, though in the degree of respect and courtesy everyone offers him, each is free to choose. As noted, he may not kill or harm anyone, or even beat one of his own servants.” [14]
MIRZA ABU TALEB KHAN ISFAHANI
Mirza Abu Taleb Khan Isfahani was another Iranian writer whose family had fled to India from the turbulence of Nader Shah’s reign. He was born in 1752 in Lucknow. He became a revenue officer in India. In 1799, he set out for England from Calcutta and spent more than two years in England. The whole journey through several European countries and Turkey lasted four years. On his return to Bengal, he wrote up his observations in 1803-1805 as Masir-e Talebi fi Bilad-e Ifrangi, published in Calcutta in 1812. In fact, an English translation, The Travels of Taleb in the Lands of the Franks, had already been published in London in two volumes in 1810. It was one of the first descriptions of English life written by a Muslim and the very first account to be translated into English. [15]
During his stay in England, he was received by King George III and became acquainted with many noblemen, down to ordinary people. He went to great pains to record what he had learnt and to provide information on countries and people far beyond the ken of most Eastern people of the time. He collected information on the Reformation, the parliamentary and judicial systems, the printing companies, freemasonry and so on. Like Abdul-Latif Khan, he was one of the first Persian writers to draw attention to the novel phenomenon of a king whose powers were limited and whose succession was secured by law. He wrote that although the king “was free to distribute patronage and largess, he had no power to kill or injure anyone.” He was most impressed by a sense of equality which exists between different classes in Britain and how the working classes are not afraid of those in power. He recounts the story of how a lord, when he sullied his gloves on a newly-painted door, upbraided the painter, who saucily asked whether the nobleman had eyes in his head or not. He remarks how this freedom makes the ordinary people independent and brave.
Mirza Abu-Taleb was equally impressed by the orderly succession to the throne enjoyed by English kings, the excellence of the British Constitution and also by the fact that superior authority was invested in the Parliament. At first, he had taken a poor view of the debates in the House of Commons, which “reminded me of two flocks of Indian paroquets, sitting upon opposite mango-trees, scolding at each other; the most noisy of whom were Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox.” [16] But he also recognised that Parliament performed many useful functions, such as regulating taxes, providing a check upon all contractors and public agents and being a restraint upon ministers.
He praises Britain’s independent judicial system, but he did not approve of its adversarial nature. He was “disgusted to observe that in these civil courts, law very often overruled equity.” He praised the English love of liberty and considered that “the common people here enjoy more freedom and equality than in any other well-regulated government in the world” and were even free to abuse their superior, including Ministers of the Crown, in newspapers and caricatures” though he also noted that this equality was more apparent than real, ”for the differences between the comforts of the rich and the poor is, in England, much greater than in India.” [17]
Mirza Abu-Taleb hugely enjoyed the greater sexual freedom enjoyed by women in England and noted that the Europeans expected their wives to take part in their husbands’ business, which militated against gender segregation. [18] Nevertheless, he defended the treatment of women in Muslim lands, insisting that Muslim women enjoyed certain advantages over their Western counterparts. Muslim women could separate easily from their husbands, and in the case of divorce, they were given custody of their daughters, in contrast to Europe, where fathers got custody of all children. [19] Furthermore, he was critical of the licentiousness of both sexes in London and the large number of brothels and courtesans, there being “scarcely a street in the metropolis where they are not to be found.” [20]
Mirza Abu-Taleb made a list of what he regarded to be the virtues and the vices of the British people. Among their virtues he includes “a high sense of honour”, “a reverence for every thing or person possessing superior excellence”, “a dread of offending the rules of propriety or the laws of the realm”, “a strong desire to improve the situation of the common people, and an aversion to do anything which can injure them”, “an adherence to the rule of fashion”, “a passion for mechanism, and their numerous contrivances for facilitating labour and industry”, “plainness of manners, and sincerity of disposition”, “good natural sense and soundness of judgement which induce them to prefer things that are useful to those that are brilliant”, “their perseverance in the acquirement of science, and the attainment of wealth and honours”, “their hospitality which is also very praiseworthy, and their attention to their guests can nowhere be exceeded.” [21]
Among their faults he included: “Their want of faith in religion, and their great inclination to philosophy (atheism)”, “their pride and insolence… being puffed up with their power and good fortune for the last fifty years”, “a passion for acquiring money, and their attachment to worldly affairs”, “a desire of ease, and a dislike of exertion”, “a luxurious manner of living, by which their wants are increased a hundred-fold”, “their want of chastity” and “a contempt for the customs of other nations and the preference they give to their own.” [22]
I have dwelt at some length on the account of Mirza Abu-Taleb about Britain, as he was the first Persian writer who had visited Britain and had written about it, and as his account of life in Britain influenced the impression which many people gained about life and politics in Britain.
AQA AHMAD BEHBAHANI
Aqa Ahmad Behbahani, a clergyman brought up in Kermanshah, emigrated to India, where he settled as a leader of Friday prayers in British-ruled Patna, writing his travelogue, Mir’at al’ahwal-i Jahan-nema (The World Revealing Mirror) in 1810. [23] Coming from a clerical background, Behbahani sees the British system of government as the equivalent of an ideal Islamic state. He plays down the democratic element in British government and sees in it a sort of rationalisation of Shi’i-Usuli ideals. He puts a unique twist on his description of the British form of government. He regards the British monarch as a kind of philosopher-king or even a religious-king. He says that the British philosophers and learned men had made the affairs of state dependent on the consent of three entities: the king, the ministers, and members of Parliament, whom he regards as the well-wishers of the king and his subjects. He states that the king is chosen by the nobles, and he must be a kind of mujtahid or accomplished jurist, a kind of precursor to Ayatollah Khomeini.
He sees the king and ministers as constrained by Parliament, which he defines as the “place of consultation” (mahall-e mashwirat), with its Koranic undertones of Shawerhom fi’l Amr (Consult them in thy affairs), or Amrohom shura beynahom (their affairs should be settled by consultation among them). It is interesting to note that the Iranian Parliament, which was formed after the 1905-6 Constitutional Movement, was called Majlis Shura or Consultative Assembly. Many Muslim rulers and clerics of the time took a dim view of the French Revolution. They looked to Britain’s constitutional monarchy as an ideal system to emulate, which would bring about social change without either putting an end to the monarchy or suppressing religion. [24]
As can be noticed, in the eighteenth century, most of the writings about the West, and in particular Britain, were positive and balanced. The views expressed were moderate and combined praise and blame in equal measure, with a genuine desire to learn what they could from the West. The writers did not have a chip on their shoulders, nor were they unduly enamoured by the West. They viewed themselves and the Westerners, more or less, as equals, without any feeling of either revulsion or adoration. They believed that the East could learn many lessons from the West. At the same time, they were quite confident about their own culture and did not believe that they had to be frightened of a superior and all-conquering Western cultural onslaught.
SEYYED JAMAL’UD-DIN ASADABADI (AFGHANI)
Coming to the nineteenth century, one of the most influential Iranian writers and activists who was fascinated by Western concepts of democracy and the rule of law was Seyyed Jamal’ud-Din Asadabadi (?1830-1897). A great deal has been written about him, and there is no need to dwell at length on him here. Although Afghani was one of the founders and advocates of Pan-Islamism, he was also a great admirer of democratic institutions in the West and stressed that the only way to put an end to the despotic rule of Muslim monarchs was to emulate Western democratic systems.
His advocacy of Pan-Islamism was more as a method for awakening the Muslim masses and mobilising them in an anti-imperialist campaign rather than as a return to a reactionary Islam. His use of Islam was more as a political tool rather than due to pious conviction, as can be seen from his disparaging tone about the mullahs and about the negative influence of Islam on society. [25] It is curious that although in his statements addressed to Muslims he always called on them to wage an anti-Western and anti-British campaign, nevertheless, in his writings written in the West, he advocated British rule or, at least, British influence in Iran. Criticising the policies of Naser al-Din Shah, he wrote: “Persia stood in need of the kindling and liberalising influences of a wisely directed British statesmanship.” [26]
MIRZA MALKUM KHAN
Another great Iranian reformer who had been influenced by his encounters with Western civilisation was Mirza Malkum Khan. Malkum Khan was born of Armenian parentage in 1833 in the Christian quarter of New Julfa in Isfahan. His father, a graduate of a British school in India, taught English and French first in Isfahan and later at the royal court in Tehran. Malkum Khan was educated at a French Catholic school in Isfahan and then left for France to study engineering. Returning to Iran, Malkum Khan joined the recently opened Dar al-Fonun University.
He converted to Islam mainly in order to further his public career. [27] He impressed Naser al-Din Shah with his scientific experiments, and having won the attention of the shah, Malkum Khan drafted for him a Daftar-i Tanzimat (Book of Reform), inspired by the contemporary Tanzimat movement in the Ottoman Empire. Daftar was one of the first systematic proposals for reform written in the nineteenth century. In this work, he advocated the urgent need for reform and the rule of law. He used the term qanun for secular laws to differentiate them from religious cannons (shari’a) and the old state regulations (‘Urf).
The clerics in Tehran denounced these concepts as ”heretical innovations” (bid’a). Consequently, the Shah exiled Malkum Khan to the Ottoman Empire. It was during his exile that Malkum Khan wrote his A Traveller’s Tale. In this book, he parodied both the court intellectuals and scribes as well as the clergy for their obscurantist ideas. Malkum Khan served as Iran’s ambassador to Britain for several years. When he was living in London, Malkum Khan founded the famous newspaper Qanun to advocate his reforms. This newspaper played an important role in the awakening of the Iranians and paved the way for the Constitutional Revolution. Malkum Khan advocates the need for Iranians to turn to Western civilisation and to copy its democratic institutions. To him, the term civilisation explicitly meant Western civilisation.
SEYYED HASAN TAQIZADEH
Seyyed Hasan Taqizadeh was another influential writer and statesman who played a very important role in the Constitutional Revolution. He had broken from his conservative clerical background to pursue his burning interest in Western civilisation. He turned towards modern sciences of physics, medicine and practical chemistry. His interest in Western scientific discoveries led him to study Western democratic systems. He was unique among his compatriots in openly advocating a total rejection of Iran’s religious past and an adoption of Western ways. He openly stated that the Iranians had no option but to become Westernised from the top of their head to the tips of their toes. [28]
Later on in life, Taqizadeh moderated his views about the West. In an article written in 1960, he admitted:
“Of course, I believe in the necessity of adopting Western civilisation and its science, rationalism, education and other desirable Western achievements, as well as some of their minor traits and qualities. However, I hope that the educated people of our country would also safeguard their own unique national customs and traditions. They should not regard these with contempt and should adhere to them with dignity and pride, without any hostility to other nations or belittling other nations’ traits and habits.” [29]
DR SEYYED FAKHROD-DIN SHADEMAN
Dr Seyyed Fakhrod-Din Shademan was one of the modern writers who was very much involved with the concept of the West. He was a prolific writer who published many books, articles and translations. One of his better-known essays, which deals specifically with the West, is Taskhir-e Tamaddon-e Farangi (the Conquest of Western Civilisation), which was published in 1326 (1947). [30] In this essay, Shademan writes: “Before Iran is completely conquered, dominated and destroyed by the West, the Iranians should deliberately, rationally and gradually conquer [taskhir, or adopt) Western civilisation. [31] However, before the Iranians can do this, there is a dangerous internal enemy which has afflicted Iran more than any calamity that Iran has ever experienced in its entire history. This enemy is confusion of thought, blind imitation, alienation from one’s culture and a superficial understanding of Western culture. In one word, this enemy is fokoli.
To Shademan, fokoli (literally the wearer of a bow-tie, or someone who has forsaken his own clothes for the borrowed Western attire) is someone who has little understanding of his own culture and even less of Western culture. He warns that if Iranians do not overcome this superficial adoration of Western culture, they will lose their native culture without acquiring the benefits of Western civilisation. He writes: “If we do not wake up and if we do not open our eyes, we shall lose our millennia-old home.” This is how he defines the fokoli:
“Fokoli is a brazen, inarticulate person who has learned a little of a Western tongue and who knows less of his native language. He believes that he can define for us in a language which he cannot speak, the Western civilisation which he does not understand… Fokoli is a lustful, short-sighted and empty-headed person who imagines that Western civilisation is limited to dancing, gambling, drinking and lasciviousness. He does not realise that the basis of Western civilisation is study, research, debate and discussion for the sake of learning the truth. It is travelling to the North Pole. It is counting the words of the Shah Nameh and describing the meaning of each word [a reference to the major study of the great Persian epic by the French scholar Jules Mohl]. It has been toiling for more than twenty years to translate the Mathnavi into English [referring to the great achievement of Professor R A Nicholson of Cambridge University, who devoted his entire academic life to the study of Rumi and the translation of his works into English]. It is finding the source of the Nile. These are the achievements of Western civilisation, not drinking and dancing day and night.” [32]
JALAL AL-E AHMAD (1927-1969):
Jalal Al-e Ahmad and Ali Shari’ati (1933-1977) were perhaps the two most influential writers in Iran, whose ideas had a great impact on the young university-educated people and paved the way for the Islamic revolution. Both Al-e Ahmad and Shari’ati came from clerical backgrounds, turned leftist and then religious again. Al-e Ahmad’s grandfather, father, older brother, two brothers-in-law, and a nephew were all clerics. Ayatollah Mahmud Taleqani, the famous revolutionary cleric from Tehran who played a very prominent role immediately before and after the Islamic revolution, was Al-e Ahmad’s cousin. In 1943, Al-e Ahmad was sent by his father to Najaf as a talabeh to be trained as a mullah under the supervision of his older brother. After a short stay in Najaf, he abandoned his religious studies and returned to Iran; in his own words: “Fed up and stifled, and turning my back on both my father and my brother. Because on that journey, I had seen a trap in the form of a mantle and a cloak.” [33]
Having rebelled against his religious background, he threw himself, heart and soul, into political activities and became an active member of the communist Tudeh Party of Iran. Within a year, he was a member of the Tehran provincial committee and the co-editor of a party newspaper. In 1948, he was a member of the group which, under the leadership of Khalil Maleki, broke away from the mainline Tudeh Party and set up a new group (enshe’ab), which was still firmly within the framework of Marxism-Leninism.
On the afternoon of January 17, 1948, Moscow Radio openly attacked the new group, charging its members with treachery. Instead of remaining faithful to their principles, Al-e Ahmad and most of those who had signed the declaration of enshe’ab immediately signed a new statement announcing the dissolution of the new party. Al-e Ahmad joined several other leftist parties, but after the 1953 coup, he issued a “renunciation”, saying that he had ceased all his political activities and did not belong to any party. However, the influence of his twin early affiliations, to religious orthodoxy and to communism, remained with him throughout his life. His fundamentalist background instinctively set him against change and modernism, and his Tudeh background made him doubly hostile towards any modernisation associated with the West.
Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s famous book Gharbzadegi became the most important manifesto of all those who resented the excessive influence of the West in Iran.[34] The word Gharbzadegi was coined by Ahmad Fardid, Al-e Ahmad’s friend and professor of philosophy at the University of Tehran, but it was due to Al-e Ahmad that the term achieved such fame and influence. Gharbzadegi, which has been translated as “disease of Westernism”, ‘Westitis’, ‘Westernosis’, ‘Westomania’, ‘Weststrickenness’, ‘Weststruckedness”’, ‘plagued by the West’, or “Westoxication”, starts with the following words: “I speak of being afflicted with ‘westitis’ the way I would speak of being afflicted with cholera. If this is not palatable, let us say it is akin to being stricken by heat or by cold. But it is not either. It is something more on the order of being attacked by a tongue worm. Have you ever seen how wheat rots? From within. The husk remains whole, but it is only an empty shell like the discarded chrysalis of a butterfly hanging from a tree. In any case, we are dealing with a sickness, a disease imported from abroad, and developed in an environment receptive to it.” [35]
He defines the West as the developed or industrialised countries, which “with the aid of machines, are capable of converting raw materials into something more complex and marketing it in the form of manufactured goods. These raw materials are not just iron ore or oil or gut or cotton, or tragacanth. They are also myths, principles of belief, music, and transcendental realities.” [36]
The problem with Al-e Ahmad’s assessment of the West is that although he describes Western superiority and domination as the result of its mastery of the ‘machine’, he is not sure whether it is a good thing for Iranians to master the machine like the Westerners or not. On the one hand, he seems to suggest that in order to be freed from Western domination, it is essential for Iranians to become industrialised. He says: “As long as we are solely consumers, as long as we do not manufacture machines, we shall be afflicted with the West.” On the other hand, he believes that the mastery of the machine will also lead to being plagued by the West: “And the ironic part is that as soon as we are able to make machines, we shall become machine-stricken! We shall be like people of the West, whose cries about self-willed technology and machines are heard everywhere.” [37] He refers to La France contre les Robots by George Bernanos [38] as an example of the Western disenchantment with machines.
At times, he seems to forget that Western technological development is only the product of the past few centuries, and his Western plague becomes synonymous with Christianity. He complains: ‘How can we view these twelve centuries of struggle and competition as anything but a struggle between Islam and Christianity?’ [39] Yet, at other times, in a complete distortion of the meaning of words, he goes on to say: “We know that, in his youth, the Prophet traded with Syria and that he spoke with a certain monk there. And was there ever any easier way to proselytise than with the cry “Say: There is no God but Allah and ye shall prosper”? Moreover, in the final analysis, was not our turning towards Islam a turning towards the West? We will be able to provide a precise answer to this question once we have learned what incredible injustices were visited on people as a result of the ossified customs of the Sasanians.” [40]
However, despite these inconsistencies, maybe even because of this rejection of whatever was foreign and alien, whether Islam or Christianity, or the Crusades or European civilisation and modern machines, Al-e Ahmad struck a sympathetic chord in the young people who were fed up with the loss of their identity and with a veneer of Westernisation and were searching for native authenticity. Despite the general mixing of praise and blame for Islam and strongly criticising the behaviour of the Safavid clergy who, according to Al-e Ahmad, were responsible for Iran’s subsequent backwardness, the major message which can be deduced from Gharbzadegi is a kind of return to ‘genuine, progressive’ Islam, whatever that might be.
In his later writings, such as Dar Khedmat va Khiyanat-e Rowshanfekran (On the Services and Treasonable Activity of Intellectuals), Al-e Ahmad advocated an alliance between intellectuals and the clergy against the Pahlavi regime. In 1962, when Jalal’s father died, Ayatollah Khomeyni arranged a memorial service for him, after which the two men met, and Khomeyni spoke approvingly of Al-e Ahmad’s Gharbzadegi. In another meeting between the two men in Qom in Esfand 1341 (February/March 1963), Al-e Ahmad suggested an alliance between the intellectuals and the mullahs against the shah. Shaking hands with Khomeyni, Al-e Ahmad is reputed to have stated: “We will defeat the government if we continue holding hands.” [41]
A year later, Al-e Ahmad went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, and Khasi dar Miqat (Lost in the Crowd) is the account of that journey. The same love-hate relationship and an attitude of reverence and revulsion can be seen in his interesting account of his visit to Mecca, Khasi dar Miqat, in which he talks approvingly of the unity which exists between the pilgrims from all over the world who have come with sincerity and intense faith to perform their religious duty of pilgrimage. At the same time, he talks about the coarseness and crudeness of the crowds and speaks of the arrangements of pilgrimage as “mechanised barbarism.” [42]
He was one of the first persons to say that the control of Hajj ceremonies should be taken out of the hand of the Saudi authorities and be given to an international organisation composed of Muslims from all over the world, an idea which found favour with many Islamic activists in Iran during the first few years after the victory of the Islamic revolution when there were numerous clashes between Iranian pilgrims and Saudi authorities.
DARYUSH SHAYEGAN:
Daryush Shayegan is a professor of comparative philosophy. He is very well-read both in Western philosophy as well as in Hindu and Islamic philosophies. He has published several works on the theme of Iran’s encounter with the West. In one of his books, Idols of the Mind and Perennial Memory, first published in 1975 [43] he argues that in order to understand the intensity of the challenge which Iran and the East generally face in their encounter with the West, it is important that they understand the main differences between the two world-views. He writes that “As opposed to our ‘poetic-mythological’ [sha’eraneh-asatiri] world-view, the Western world view is based on ‘rationalism and realism or experimentalism’ [ta’aqoli-hosuli]. In the West, truth is merely something which can be proved by experiment and tests.” According to him, the ‘rationalisation’ of every manifestation of reality was accompanied by ‘de-mythologising.’
He says that the ultimate outcome of this de-mystification and de-mythologising of reality and reliance upon rationalism and experimentation has led the West to the worship of man and history and has been summed up in Neitzche’s famous statement that “God is dead” and his concept of replacing the traditional view of God with a superman. The development of Western philosophy from Descartes to Karl Marx has turned nature itself into something purely materialistic and has turned man into a “working animal” and ultimately to nihilism and existentialism. [44]
He studies the consequences of this kind of thinking for Western art and the influence it has had on Eastern and Persian art. He believes that this influence has led to a kind of artistic and intellectual chaos and disorder, which has encouraged blind imitation of everything Western. While Western art and architecture have developed out of a long process of intellectual development and rationalism during the past few centuries in the West, the imitated Iranian art, unlike Iran’s traditional art and miniature, which were deeply rooted in Iranian national and intellectual consciousness, has no roots and does not reflect the deeper artistic feelings of our people.
He believes that Iran and other Eastern countries are passing through a period of intellectual and artistic stagnation and transition (fetrat). Although he regrets the passing of Iran’s ‘poetic-mythological’ world-view, Professor Shayegan seems to suggest that we do not have any strong defences against the Western onslaught. He writes: ‘In the face of the Western intellectual onslaught which believes in experimentalism and rationalism which has resulted in a technological age with its amazing material gains and technical ability, our poetic view of the world seems incongruous, brittle, reactionary and, according to some, it is even acting as a break in the path of progress.” [45] He blames all those who either totally reject or totally adopt what the West has to offer.
AYATOLLAH RUHOLLAH KHOMEINI
The most anti-Western movement in Iran and in the Islamic world as a whole was, of course, the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini had little knowledge and even less interest in the West. During the few months that he stayed in Paris, his aides Bani-Sadr and Qotbzadeh tried to arrange a tour of Paris for him. His response was that he was not interested. His interview shortly after returning to Iran with Oriana Fallaci was quite revealing. He strongly criticised “the decadent Western civilisation”. Asked about whether Iranians would be permitted to listen to Western music, he said that the Iranians should not listen to “obscene and vulgar Western music”. Oriana Fallaci asked what about the music of Bach, Beethoven or Mozart. Ayatollah Khomeini said that he had not heard about them, but in any case, Iranians should not listen to vulgar Western music.
In all his sermons and speeches after the victory of the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini spoke with contempt and hostility about the West, which he regarded to be the deadly enemy of Islam and Muslims. One of his main campaigns was to rid the country of Western influences. In order to do so, he closed the universities for two years to purge them of Western influences. His attitude to Iranian intellectuals and writers who had done so much for the cause of the revolution was to dismiss them as agents of foreigners. In his famous 6th May 1978 interview with Le Monde, Khomeini referred to Iranian intellectuals and writers as “agents of the shah” and lackeys of the superpowers, and warned the faithful to steer free from their influence. Later, he issued a religious proclamation addressed to university students in which he accused the country’s intelligentsia of seeking only ministerial or parliamentary posts. “These writers,” he said, “who have thus far neither taken a step nor done anything for Islam have now found, in the name of patriotism and love of freedom, an opportunity… have picked up their pens and are hypocritically scribbling certain things.” [46]
In March 1979, only one month after Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Iran, some members of the Writers’ Association of Iran arranged for an audience with him. Simin Daneshvar, the widow of Al-e Ahmad and herself a famous writer, as the representative of the group, began by congratulating Khomeini on his return from exile and his successful leadership of the Iranian revolution. She then recounted for him the history of the Association’s opposition to, and struggle against, the shah’s regime and concluded by pointing out the hopes of the country’s writers for intellectual and artistic freedom. In response, Ayatollah Khomeini bade the writers to follow the path of Islam. In practice, a few months later, Hezbollahi thugs attacked the meetings of the Writers’ Association, their publications were banned by the government, and most of the leading figures of the Association were forced to flee the country and are still living in exile. Of those who were left behind, a few were executed, some were imprisoned, and the rest had to inflict intellectual and artistic imprisonment upon themselves by refusing to write or speak in public.
Ayatollah Khomeini’s remark about the West, that “America is worse than England, England is worse than America, Russia is worse than both of them, and every one of them is worse than the other”, has become quite famous.
HOJJAT OL-ESLAM MOHAMMAD KHATAMI
Eighteen years after the victory of the Islamic revolution of Iran and a continuous campaign against the West, things have come full circle. One result of the Islamic revolution has been the politicisation of the mullahs, which has meant that instead of engaging in pure rhetoric, they have had to come face to face with international realities. Ironically, the intense anti-Western frenzy of the past eighteen years has led many people, including the clergy, to re-examine what the West means and how they should deal with it.
When Hojjat ol-Eslam Mohammad Khatami, the 53-year-old president-elect of Iran who will be sworn in as Iran’s next president on 3rd August 1997, was still the minister of culture and Islamic guidance in the cabinet of President Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, he was invited by the Islamic Society of the University of Tehran to address a large gathering of the members of that society.
In his address, he warned those committed, ideologically-charged students against underestimating the challenge of the West, which he called “the main ideological rival of the Islamic worldview.” Enumerating some of the main achievements of Western civilisation, such as scientific and technological development, rationalism, individual freedom and democracy, he went on to say:
“We should not forget that our main ideological rival enjoys a powerful and deep-rooted intellectual and political worldview. The contemporary worldview, which has been moulded by the West, is based upon a rational philosophy. The Western worldview has been formed in the course of many centuries, and its intellectual bases have been carefully formulated. Western philosophy has been analysed and elucidated from different angles by hundreds of great scholars in the course of many centuries. It has passed through many stages. It has been tested by time. It has evolved and matured. It has given birth to diverse intellectual schools of thought. The important point to remember is that the Western intellectual and political value system is in keeping with man’s basic instincts. Basically, human nature is instinctively in favour of that intellectual system and supports that ideology. The foundations of the modern world-view are based on freedom.” [47]
[1] Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient [first published by Routledge, 1978],(Penguin Books, 1995), p 3.
[2] Ibid, p. 4.
[3] Ibid., p. 7.
[4] Antonio Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks: Selections, trans and ed. Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971).
[5] Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and Discipline and Punish and The Order of Things.
[6] R. W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1962); quoted in Edward W. Said, Orientalism (First published by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1978; repr. Penguin Books, 1995), pp. 49-50. Also see Francis Dvornik, The Ecumenical Councils (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1961), pp. 65-6.
[7] See: Shaul Shaked, ed. Studies Relating to Jewish Contacts with Persian Culture Throughout the Ages (1982), pp. 292-303; quoted by Haydeh Sahim, Iran Nameh, Vol. XV, No 1, Winter 1997, p. 52.
[8] For information about the history of early Christian churches in Iran, see: Bishop H. B. Dehqani-Tafti, Christ and Christianity among the Iranians [in Persian], (London: Sohrab Books, 1992), vol. I, pp. 13-28.
[9] John D. Yohannan, Persian Poetry in England and America: A 200-Year History (Caravan Books, New York, 1977), x.
[10] The Journey of William Rubruck to the Eastern Parts of the World 1253-55 as narrated by himself, translated from Latin with an introductory notice by William Woodville Rockhill, Hakluyt Society, 1900, p. xiv.
[11] See Denis Wright, The Persians Amongst the English: Episodes in Anglo-Persian History (I. B. Tauris, London, 1985), pp. 9-24.
[12] Mir ‘Abdul-Latif Khan Shushtari, Tuhfat al-’alam va zayl al-tuhfah, ed. S. Muvahhid (Tehran: Tahuri, 1984).
[13] Shushtari, Tuhfat, 275.
[14] Ibid, 276; quoted by Cole, op cit, p. 8.
[15] Mirza Abu Taleb Isfahani, Masir-i Talebi fi bilad-e Ifrangi, ed. Husayn Khadivjam (Tehran: Shirkat-e Sihami, 1972); Charles Stewart (trans.) Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan (New Delhi: Sona, repr. 1972).
[16] Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan in Asia, Africa and Europe, tr. By Charles Stewart, 3 vols, (London, 1814, 2nd edition), Vol. II, p. 55.
[17] Ibid., p. 35.
[18] Abu-Taleb, Travels, 343-5.
[19] Ibid, 348-51.
[20] Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 128-53.
[21] Ibid., Vol. II, pp 160-165.
[22] Ibid., pp. 128-53.
[23] Aqa Ahmad Behbahani, Mir’at al-ahwal-i Jahan-nema (London, British Library, Persian MS, Add. 24,052).
[24] For a brief summary of the Travels of Mirza Abu-Taleb Khan, see: Denis Wright, The Persians amongst the English: Episodes in Anglo-Persian History (London: I. B. Tauris, 1985), 44-52. For a fuller study of the writings of all three, see: Juan R. I. Cole, “Invisible Occidentalism: Eighteenth-Century Indo-Persian Constructions of the West” Iranian Studies, Vol. 25/3-4 (1992), pp 3-16.
[25] For an excellent study of Asadabadi, see: Nikki Keddie, Sayyid Jamal ad-Din “al-Afghani” (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972)
[26] Keddie, p. 419.
[27] Although ostensibly a Muslim, Malkum Khan married according to Christian rites and, according to his will, he was buried in a Christian cemetery when he died
[28] For a study of Taqizadeh’s life, see his own article “My Life” in Rahnema-ye Ketab, 13 (May-June 1970), 243-66.
[29] “The address by Seyyed Hasan Taqizadeh about the adoption of foreign civilisation, national freedom and tolerance”, (Tehran, Bashgah-e Mehrgan Publications, 1339/1960), p 23.
[30] Fakhrod-din Shademan, “Taskhir-e Tamaddon-e Farangi”, in Arayesh va Pirayesh-e Zaban (Tehran, Farhangestan Publications), 1326 (1947).
[31] Ibid., p 1.
[32] Fakhr’ud-Din Shademan, Taskhir-e Tamaddon-e Farangi (Tehran, Farhangestan Publications, 1326/1947), pp 13-19.
[33] “Gozaresh az Khuzestan, Karnameh-ye Seh Saleh,” Ketab-e Zaman, n.d., p. 67. Quoted in Robert Wells, Jalal Al-e Ahmad: Writer and Political Activist (PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, May 1983), p. 67.
[34] For an English translation of this book, see: Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Plagued by the West, translated by Paul Sprachman (Bibliotheca Persica, Caravan Books, New York, 1982). All references will be to this book. There are at least two other English translations of this work.
[35] Ibid., P 3.
[36] Ibid, p 3.
[37] Ibid., p 7.
[38] Paris: Pilon, 1970.
[39] Ibid., p 9.
[40] P. 17
[41] Quoted in Robery Wells, Jalal al-e Ahmad: Writer and Political Activist (PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, May 1983), p. 124.
[42] This book has been translated into English as Lost in the Crowd, translated by John Green with Ahmad Alizadeh and Farzin Yazdanfar (Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1985).
[43] Daryush Shayegan, Botha-ye Zehni va Khatere-ye Azali, Tehran, Amir Kabir, 2535 Imperial Calendar.
[44] Daryush Shayegan, Botha-ye Zehni va Khatere-ye Azali, (Tehran, Amir Kabir, 1976), pp 87-88.
[45] Ibid., p 90
[46] Ruhollah Khomeini, “Statement addressed to University Students,” 1977 (no date), quoted in Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak “, Protest and Perish: A History of the Writers’ Association of Iran” in Iranian Studies, vol. XVIII, Nos. 2-4, Spring-Autumn 1985, pp 214-215.
[47] Quoted in Persian monthly ‘Sobh’, Khordad 1376 (May 1997), p 18.
F Jahanpour 