Representation of the West in Motahari’s Political Discourse on the Basis of the Post-Colonial Approach

The question of how to confront the West has always been an important issue for Iranians and their political and intellectual elites. The Islamic Revolution of Iran was a product of such a concern. Ayatollah Morteza Motahari, as one of the most important ideologue of the Islamic Revolution, tried to provide an account of Islam that is able to compete with new Western ideologies, particularly Marxism, in order to prevent the youth from being attracted to such ideologies. He created new meanings and notions derived from religious, traditional and even modern roots. In this paper, the main question is how the West is represented in Motahari’s political discourse. The post-colonial approach is the theoretical framework and Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse analysis theory is the research method. The findings of the research indicate that Motahari through representation and creation of otherness draws an identity boundary between “us” (Iranians) and the other (the West), and represents the latter with signifiers such as imperialist, exploiter, evil, cruel and darkness.