The Roots of Cultural Policy in the Islamic Republic of Iran : In the speech of three scholars of Iran Islamic Revolution in 1979 (Shariati, Motahari and Fardid)

The purpose of this study is to identify the roots of cultural policy making in the IRI. Having a historical approach this article has used a thematic content analysis with a “content coding technique” to review the works of three Islamic revolutionary scholars whose views have been frequent reference to many cultural policy makers before and after the revolution. In this regard there have been “thirty headlines” identified as policy making headings which are divided into: ten headlines from Ali Shariati’s book called “Returns”, eight headlines from "The Future of the Islamic Revolution" a book by Morteza Motahari, and twelve headlines from a series of Seyyed Ahmad Fardid’s lectures, titled as "Hereafter Conquest and Meetings of Farahi". According to the results of this research, the sharing feature of these three views, albeit from different origins of ideas, is the two following lines "Confrontation with Being Westernized" and "the Priority of Reform, and the Development of Thought and Culture". Another result of this research indicates the influence of the document "Principles of cultural policy of the country" through the views of these scholars. At the end of this article, it is claimed that the Islamic Republic of Iran's cultural policies, both elective and compound, are rooted in the cultural theorists of the revolution, and it cannot be accepted that the Islamic Republic of Iran, in its forty-year lifetime, departed from the first designed cultural principles. It is a form of early thought that has been recognized and formed as normal