Khatami's call for Islamic democracy pleasing to Arabs

Iran's President Muhammad Khatami is a hit in the Arab world as well as in his own country. While 70 per cent of Iranians support his reforms, hundreds of thousands of Arabs have been won over by his call for "Islamic democracy" in a region where Islam is used to oppress and democrats are rare. If "Islamic democracy" prospers in Iran, it could very well pose a "threat" to the undemocratic status quo in the Arab world.

Muslim thinkers have held for over a century that Islam and democracy are not only compatible but complementary because any "Islamic government" should be based on the will of the community (the "ijma of the umma"). Mr Khatami seeks to establish an "Islamic civil society", democratic, pluralistic and tolerant. This attracts many Arabs, deeply disappointed that independence did not create secular democracies modelled on those of the West. Mr Khatami's interview, recorded during a visit to Qatar, was broadcast on Sunday and Monday via the highly popular Jazeera satellite TV station.

Western news agencies picked up only Mr Khatami's suggestion that President Clinton should translate his good intentions toward Tehran into "practical changes" in policy by lifting of sanctions. But Arabs were enthralled by other themes covered in the interview, transmitted soon after he spoke to 100,000 equally enthusiastic supporters at a Tehran sports stadium on the second anniversary of his landslide electoral victory. Mr Khatami said that his liberal government had initiated a new stage in the "Islamic Revolution" launched by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. "It has taken 20 years to develop democracy," he admitted, adding: "We never had democracy before." Iran's democracy is in its "infancy" and "has a long way to go".

He won Arab approval for his proposal for a regional defence pact excluding "foreign powers" such as the US and Britain which maintain permanent air, naval and ground forces in the Gulf. He also secured Arab support when he stated that regional governments should not accept a ban on nuclear weapons until this applies to all countries in the area, meaning Israel.

Mr Khatami's resonant remarks came at the end of historic visits to Damascus, Riyadh and Doha engineered by Syria, Iran's sole Arab ally, and Saudi Arabia, Iran's competitor for the spiritual leadership of the Muslim world. In Damascus, Mr Khatami asserted Iran's regional role by meeting Palestinian dissidents opposed to the Oslo peace process and Lebanese Hizbullah leaders, as well as Syria's President Hafez al-Assad.

Mr Khatami warned Israel that there will be no peace in the region unless Israel withdraws from all occupied Arab land. Israel takes very seriously Iran's drive to develop chemical, biological and nuclear warheads and the missiles to deliver them. The unstated threat posed by Tehran's advanced weaponry strengthens Arab bargaining power in US-brokered negotiations with Israel. Since Iran said it will accept accords reached by the Arabs with Israel, the threat will be removed when the Arabs secure their peace aims. This message also reached the Arabs.

Mr Khatami's visit to Riyadh restored relations after a 21-year break following clashes between Saudi police and Iranian pilgrims demonstrating against the US and Israel during the Muslim pilgrimage, the Hajj. Iranians protested without leave while the Saudis claimed political activity was banned during the Hajj, transforming a political difference into a theological dispute. The death in 1989 of Iran's revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, diminished the dispute, while Mr Khatami's election in 1997 permitted reconciliation.

The encounter between the orthodox Sunni King Fahd and the heterodox Shia Hajatolislam Khatami, a "bishop" in Iran's clerical hierarchy, signified much more than reconciliation between two different Islamic polities. The event symbolised rapprochement between Sunnis and Shias.