begin with René Guénon. Other members of that school of thought include Ananda Coomaraswamy, Frithjof Schuon, Titus Burckhardt, Martin Lings, Hossein Nasr, William Stoddart, Jean-Louis Michon, Marco Pallis, Huston Smith, Harry Oldmeadow, Reza Shah-Kazemi, and Patrick Laude. Some academics include Julius Evola in this School, although Evola presents many differences in relation to those mentioned. Another author eventually linked to perennialism is Mircea Eliade, although Eliade's link is nuanced and often contested. René Guénon A major theme in the works of René Guénon (18861951) is the contrast between traditional world views and modernism, "which he considered to be an anomaly in the history of mankind." For Guénon, the world is a manifestation of metaphysical principles, which are preserved in the perennial teachings of the world religions, but were lost to the modern world. For Guénon, "the malaise of the modern world lies in its relentless denial of the metaphysical realm." Early on, Guénon was attracted to Sufism, and in 1912 he was initiated in the Shadhili order. He started writing after his doctoral dissertation was rejected, and he left academia in 1923. His works center on the return to these traditional world views, trying to reconstruct the Perennial Philosophy. In his first books and essays, he envisaged a restoration of traditional "intellectualité" in the West on the basis of Roman Catholicism and Freemasonry. He gave up early on a purely Christian basis for a traditionalist restoration of the West, searching for other traditions. He denounced the lure of Theosophy and neo-occultism in the form of Spiritism, two influential movements that were flourishing in his lifetime. In 1930, he moved to Egypt, where he lived until his death in 1951. Influence Through its close affiliation with Sufism, the traditionalist perspective has been gaining ground in Asia and the Islamic world at large. Iran In Iran, it was introduced by Hossein Nasr as well as, earlier, by Ali Shariati, the intellectual considered the ideologue of the Iranian Revolution who recommended Guénon to his students. While it never acquired a mass following, its influence on the elite can be measured by the fact that when Ayatollah Khomeini organized the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, out of the seven members designed to serve it, three were acquainted with Traditionalist ideas, namely Abdolkarim Soroush, Reza Davari Ardakani, and Nasrullah PourJavadi. Pakistan Hasan Askari, an important writer and literary critic, was directly influenced by Guénon,