Cultural Schizophrenia: Islamic Societies Confronting the West

Synopsis

Professor Daryush Shayegan's book is a major contribution to what is perhaps the most critical debate within the Muslim world today: the relationship between its own culture and the influence of Western modernity. Based on examples ranging from Iran to Morocco, the author portrays a society he defines as peripheral-bound by a slavish adherence to its own glorified history, its "Tradition"-yet facing an external reality that derives from the West. The meeting of these two incompatible worlds sees the West but, more importantly, in how it sees itself.