The relationship between Iranian-Islamic identity and the discourse of Westernism, emphasizing the views of Ayatollah Khamenei

The issue of identity is one of the fundamental issues of human beings in different personal and social dimensions, and throughout history, different societies have faced many challenges to preserve and update their desired identity. Iranian society, like other societies, has gone through this process and faced many challenges.In the contemporary period, identity in Iranian society becomes a big and continuous issue that creates a duality. On one side is Iranian Islamic identity and on the other side there is a dynamic and influential whole called modernity. This identity challenge has produced continuous confrontations and contradictions in the Iranian society, in which different elites on both sides of the spectrum produce their desired narrative of their desired identity.The most specific identity alignment at the elite level is between the two spectrums of religious innovators as believers in Iranian-Islamic identity and the spectrum of intellectuals as genuine representatives of modernity, and each one presents its own desirable narratives. Ayatollah Khamenei is one of the people who, by being in the spectrum of religious thought both in practice and in opinion, confronts the spectrum of intellectuals as believers in the discourse of Westernism and Westernization.The results of this research show that Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, as one of the original representatives of the spectrum of religious innovation, in the face of the representatives of the discourse of modernity, i.e. intellectuals in different spectrums, both in opinion and in practice, seeks the dynamism and continuity of the whole identity. It is Iranian-Islamic in all dimensions, in such a way that with a maximum view, it places the greatest emphasis on the achievement of modern Islamic civilization against today's Western civilization. However, the spectrum opposite to them, which are the Western intellectuals, does not emphasize and insist on preserving the Iranian-Islamic identity, although they sometimes claim it, but in practice they travel the path of diminishing the dimensions of the Iranian-Islamic identity and in the macro view Also, he sees no choice but to follow the path of western modernity and follows it.