Imam Khomeini and His View of the Interaction between Religion and Identity ; From Dialogue to Revolutionary Change

The dialogue approach can better delineate Imam Khomeinis understanding of religion and identity and their relationship. But despite its high potential little has been done about this; therefore, this article tries to use a dialogue approach in determining the relationship between religion and identity from the viewpoint of Imam Khomeini. In order to achieve this, the author will initially conduct a study of the principles and doctrines related to the dialogue approach and by paying a critical glance at the current approaches in social sciences will try to determine the relationship between religion and identity in the thoughts of Imam Khomeini based on intra-dialogues and inter-dialogues. The author is of the opinion that the evolution in the thoughts of Imam Khomeini was the result of the interaction between religion and identity in the dialogue to return to ones original self and encountering the western type of dialogue. As a result of this, Imam Khomeini could play a significant role in the dialogue of "returning to ones originality" which in turn helped him to fight the all-western Pahlavi dynasty and foster a trend targeting a "return dialogue to ones self or ones originality" which was incarnated in the form of the Islamic Revolution of 1979.