A Comparative Investigation into the Western and Islamic Approaches to Motivation: Towards Developing the Indigenous Knowledge

Since human beings are social, they are influenced by the atmosphere of their society,typically motivated by it and meet their needs and realize their beliefs and goals. Thus, it can be said that a person trapped in the western thought often meets only material needs, while based on the Islamic teachings, a human being is not only a material phenomenon, also as the most respected creature, he/she has an excellent spiritual aspect that should be realized. Regarding that, the paper first discusses briefly the role of motivation in the individual and social behavior of the human beings and then investigates it from the viewpoints of western and Islamic theories. So after describing the principles of motivation based on the current western theories, it is summarized the most important equivalents of motivation in Koranic Ayats. In addition, the early and contemporary Islamic scholar's views on motivation are brought up and because of that, an Islamic theoretical framework is formed. This framework can be a basis of better understanding of Islamic and Muslim scholar's views on motivation and it leads us to conclude that although unfortunately there arent some specific theories due to existing a discontinuity of happened scientific flow in some Islamic scientific areas, like forward issue, there is a capability to develop the Islamic theories on motivation.