Gharbzadegi

Gharbzadegi (Persian: غرب‌زدگی) is a pejorative Persian term translated among other ways^[1] as 'Westernized', 'West-struck-ness',^[2] 'Westoxification'.^[3] The term implies both that Iran is "intoxicated" (zadegi) with the West (from Arabic غَرْب ḡarb), but also a victim of the West's "toxins" or disease. The "intoxication or infatuation ... impairs rational judgment" so that Iran (and sometimes also the Muslim world) is prevented from perceiving the danger of the object of its infatuation -- the toxins of the West -- "moral laxity, social injustice, secularism, devaluation of religion, and obsession with money, all of which are fueled by capitalism" and result in "cultural alienation."^[4] The term is used to refer to the loss of Iranian cultural identity through the adoption and imitation of Western models and Western criteria in education, the arts, and culture; through the transformation of Iran into a passive market for Western goods and a pawn in Western geopolitics.^[5][6]

The phrase was first coined by Ahmad Fardid, a professor of philosophy at the University of Tehran, in the 1940s to refer to the hegemony of ancient Greek philosophy -- a different meaning from that later popularised by Al-e Ahmad.^[7] It gained common usage following the clandestine publication in 1962 of the book Occidentosis: A Plague from the West by Jalal Al-e-Ahmad.