Jalal Ale Ahmad, writer and political activist
Abstract
The opposition writer and activist Jalal Ale Ahmad (1923-
1969) lived through a period of great economic, social and
political change in Iran. Brought up in a strongly religious
family background, he broke away, and in 1944 joined the
Tudeh Party, and then continued his political activities
with the Toilers' Party and the Third Force until the coup
of 1953. In the subsequent repressive political atmosphere,
he continued his political activity through his writings.
The works Gharb Zadegi and Dar Khedmat Va Khiyanate
Rowshanfekran form the core of his political critique of
Iranian society under the Pahlavis. In those works he criticises the economic, political and cultural exploitation of
Iran by the west, and suggests a revised role for the Iranian
intellectual and the religious authorities in the preservation of the Iranian cultural whole.
As a writer and political activist, writing was a form
of political activity for Ale Ahmad. Consequently, in his
articles, stories and novels, he reflects the opinions and
ideas developed in his political tracts. Thus his fiction,
and in particular the works Modire Madraseh, Nun Va'l Qalam
and Nefrine Zamin, form part of his political critique based
largely on his own experiences in Pahlavi Iran.
Ale Ahmad's writings, then, are his personal political
statement. It is a statement which has found a ready and sympathetic audience in Iran. Through his life and his writings,
therefore, an outsider may gain an insight into many of the
issues and problems facing contemporary Iran, and into the
world of the Iranian urban radical intellectual.