Gallup pollsters have finally confirmed what should have been rather obvious for some time: Muslims abroad do not regard America as the greatest nation on earth. According to a survey taken in nine Islamic countries containing nearly half the Muslims on earth, less than one in four has a positive opinion of America. Over half said they view the United States in an unfavorable light.
The results would have undoubtedly been far more negative if such anti-American strongholds as Iraq, Syria and Libya had been included – not to mention the Palestinians. Jordanian residents were surpassed only by Pakistanis, Saudi Arabians and Iranians.
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The results bode ill for Jordanian King Abdullah's attempts to hold on to his late father's American-sponsored peace treaty with Israel. The 1994 accord was not overly popular while the venerated King Hussein was still alive. With his death – and the subsequent collapse of the Oslo peace process and the election of the detested Ariel Sharon as Israel's leader – the treaty is on extremely shaky ground.
The pollsters found that for every Saudi Arabian who held a favorable opinion of America, four expressed a negative view. This might seem surprising given that the presence of U.S. armed forces helped prevent an Iraqi land invasion into the desert kingdom in 1990. Even more shocking was the finding that 36 percent of Kuwaiti residents called the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks "morally justified." After all, Uncle Sam went to great efforts to liberate the oil-rich sheikdom from Saddam's violent occupation during the Gulf War.
Strong anti-American sentiment in Saudi Arabia is probably largely a reaction to growing anti-Saudi feelings in the United States following the 9-11 assaults. The recent Saudi Mideast "peace initiative" is probably partially aimed at halting the slide into total mutual mistrust. It might succeed in improving the tainted Saudi image in America, but it won't solve the growing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A proposal that features the maximalist Arab demand for Jews to completely evacuate their holiest sites on earth in Jerusalem and Hebron is a certain recipe for further fighting ahead. The Saudi regime surely knows this, indicating that the plan actually signals the kingdom's full tilt to the widely popular anti-Israel – and by extension, anti-American – Arab camp.
Post 9-11 negative American impressions of Arabs, in general, will not be helped by the Gallup findings that 61 percent of all Muslims surveyed do not believe that Arabs carried out the New York and Washington attacks. An astounding 89 percent of Kuwaitis think that anyone but Arab terrorists did the dirty deed, which is probably about what the findings would have been in neighboring Saudi Arabia if the autocratic government there had allowed that sensitive question to be asked.
Kuwaiti officials have been busy defending themselves since the damning survey was released. The fact is that at least half the people polled were not actually Kuwaitis, they insist, but foreign workers from Egypt, Pakistan and elsewhere. Be that as it may, I vividly recall how shocked I was to catch a Kuwaiti short-wave English radio broadcast a few days after last September's assaults. The anti-American tone was strident, to say the least. I marveled that the broadcast was coming from the very people we had rescued from Saddam's clutches just over one decade ago.
The fact that many people living within the borders of the United States' closest Arab allies hold such strong anti-American views is not primarily due to Washington's support for Israel, or our robust democratic values and economic prosperity. It is part and parcel of the general Islamic worldview that Muslims should – and one day will – rule the world, not America or other Western "infidel" countries.
President Bush reacted to the Gallup survey by stating that officials in Washington "must do a better job of telling the compassionate side of the American story." However true that might be, his comments ignore the reality that the only thing which will ever fully satisfy many Muslims around the globe is the dethronement of the United States as the world's reigning superpower, and the ultimate emergence of a new Islamic-led world order.
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