TEHRAN, Jan 9: Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday that Muslims do not need the West’s vision of human rights and democracy, which he said Washington was exploiting to set up puppet regimes.

“The Islamic world does not need the West’s erroneous recipe for human rights that is frequently proven false,” he said in a message to the world’s Muslims on the occasion of the Haj.

“Western values that have resulted in immorality, promiscuity, violence, legalization of homosexuality and other such disgraces cannot be imitated” in the Islamic world, the leader said, quoted on state television.

“Today the Great Satan that is the embodiment of atrocity against humans, invites the Middle Eastern nations to adopt democracy, which is intended to put submissive puppets in power ... and achieve (America’s) dirty plots,” he said.

Washington has been pushing an initiative to encourage democratic reform and economic liberalization in Arab and other Muslim countries. —AFP