Today’s Iranian intellectuals have undergone a similar maturation process, dismissing the “utopianist” and “nativist” political ideals of their predecessors. Referring to Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s 1962 book Gharbzadegi (“West-toxication”), which became one of the manifestos of the 1979 revolution, one secular intellectual in Teheran remarked to me that, “Nobody reads Al-e Ahmad anymore.