Perils of Blind Faith

About the Book

As I write, I recall the Ash Wednesday when Christians of catholic heritage gather all over the world and kneel before priests who smudge their foreheads with ashes and admonish them to repent. It symbolizes the fact that we are of and will return to dust. How ironic it is to find a quarter of a million American and European troops with high-tech artilleries staging a war of aggression whose ostensible purpose is to oust a filthy dictator, though many believe other less altruistic motives lie just beneath the surface. The war left behind destruction, death of innocent civilians and a total chaos. I can hardly think of a context more appropriate for drawing the reader’s attention to Seid Zekavat’s timely book, The Perils of Blind Faith. Both the Ash Wednesday penitents and the soldiers act on faith, on trust in something not susceptible to empirical proof but of sufficiently compelling presence to engender hope and inspire action. Faith impels them equally, some to hope for forgiveness and heavenly bliss, others to plunge into the belly of Hell, death, destruction and madness. Faith, they say, has the power to move mountains; certainly it moves men.

Dr. Zekavat’s book deals with some specific kinds of faith, both benign and malign, and warns of the danger that grows when men cease to question faith and act upon it blindly.

About the Author

Seid M. Zekavat is professor of Statistics and Economics at Loyola Marymount University of Los Angeles. He earned a law degree from the University of Tehran, a degree in Political Science from Pepperdine University, and a doctorate in Economics from the University of Southern California. He served as chair of Loyola’s Economics department a number of times and was elected chapter president of the American Association of University Professors and vice president of the Southern California Chapter of the American Statistical Association. As well as Perils of Blind Faith, he is the author of Terms of Endurance, and State of Environment in Iran, and has published a number of research articles in the fields of Economics and Statistics. In 1998 Seid Zekavat won the Eddy Award, given annually to the most distinguished teacher of the year, sponsored by the LAX Chamber of Commerce and the Westchester Community of Los Angeles. In 2001, he was recognized by the International Fraternity of Delta Sigma Pi as the national chapter advisor of the year for his dedication to students. In 2003 the LMU Economic Society awarded him as the outstanding contributor to scholarly research.