Leaders with opposing views of Islam battle for soul of Iran

Opposing visions of Islam and the West turned yesterday's opening of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit into a battle for the soul of Iran. The country's religious conservative Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wants Muslims to "take the initiative" in fighting the West - whose imminent demise he predicted.

President Mohamed Khatami, the man who has usurped the unelected Leader in the affections of Iranians, called on Muslim governments to treat their own citizens better and asked for dialogue with the West.

But whose vision will prevail?

Speaking to Muslim delegations from 55 countries, Iran's two highest-ranking leaders defined their philosophies for their domestic audience, which watched live television broadcasts of the proceedings.

With its round auditorium beneath a steel conic dome, the conference centre felt like the inside of a missile silo. The Saudis had brought from Mecca the black cloth cover of the Kabah - the holiest shrine in Islam - to hang over the podium. Ayatollah Khamenei's defiant speech came through the headphones in a male interpreter's deep, sonorous, Lawrence Olivier-style diction. Mr Khatami's humanist, slightly pedantic discourse - as interpreted by a squeaky female voice - made up in meaning what it lacked in dramatic effect.

Superficially, Messers Khamenei and Khatami resemble one another. Both wear clerical robes and the black turban of a seyyed or descendant of the Prophet Mohamed. Both wear eyeglasses and grey beards. At age 58, Mr Khamenei is only four years older than Mr Khatami. But there is something of the fierceness of the late Ayatollah Khomeini about Mr Khamenei.

Iranians understood the difference last May, when they chose Mr Khatami over Mr Khamenei's protege, the Speaker of Parliament, Mr Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri. But rather than give in to Iranians' craving for an end to doctrinaire severity, Mr Khamenei was at it again yesterday, condemning "Western materialistic civilisation" for its obsession with "money, gluttony and carnal desires". Islam was "the only remedial, curative and saviour angel". The West's "ethical quagmire" would soon, he predicted, "engulf the present Western civilisation and wipe it out".

Both men said the Islamic world was in decline, but while Mr Khamenei attributed its "pitiable, calamitous" state to "the covert hands of arrogance" (for arrogance read the US) who made Muslims "fear each other more than we fear the enemy", Mr Khatami blamed Muslims for their own ineffectuality.

"We have ceased to ask," he said. "The absence of questioning leads to the absence of thought, which in turn leads to inevitable passivity and subjection vis-a-vis others." Reason, reflection and understanding are the key to reversing the backwardness of the Muslim world, Mr Khatami said, advising his audience to learn from Western achievements.

In a part of the world where the torture and imprisonment of political opponents are routine, Mr Khatami's espousal of something sounding suspiciously like Western democracy was nothing short of revolutionary.

He was one of the few popularly elected leaders at the summit, and you could almost hear the Arab dictators chafing in their seats. "Personal or group dictatorship or even the tyranny of the majority" had no place in civil society, he said.

Ayatollah Khamenei stuck to the traditional line, condemning the "so-called Middle East peace process" as "unjust, arrogant, contemptuous" and rejecting the "land for peace" formula which calls on Israel to return occupied parts of neighbouring countries "provided that we accept that Palestine belongs to them".

Mr Khatami asked only what Arab governments and Europeans have demanded: the right to self-determination for the Palestinians, the return of refugees and the liberation of Israeli-occupied territories.