IMPEACH BUSH

When it comes to renovating America's image in the greater Islamic world, the news is not getting any better.

An extensive, new public opinion survey conducted in four predominantly Muslim countries finds not only that hard feelings toward the United States' global role persist but that something more ominous is happening as well: Large majorities believe that the United States is in some kind of a war against Islam itself.

Roughly 8 in 10 people surveyed in Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco, and Pakistan agreed that the United States is trying to "weaken and divide the Islamic world." Bush administration officials, including the president, have frequently said that they are doing nothing of the sort, and that they respect Islam as a great religion. These views are particularly troubling since they come from four countries that, traditionally, have had good relations with the United States and that play an outsize role in the politics of the Islamic world.

That particular finding--perhaps the most disturbing among many bad-news indicators--comes from a survey released this month by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, a research effort affiliated with the University of Maryland. The study suggests that the classic battle for hearts and minds in the Bush administration-led "war on terrorism" is going poorly, despite the considerable attention being paid in Washington and in U.S. embassies abroad to trying to improve America's standing in Muslim countries. President Bush put one of his most trusted aides from Texas, Karen Hughes, in charge of administration efforts to reach out to Muslim public opinion.

But the effort appears not to be changing the big picture--as seen by many Muslims overseas. "While U.S. leaders may frame the conflict as a war on terrorism, people in the Islamic world clearly perceive the United States as being at war with Islam," reports Steven Kull, principal investigator in the study and editor of WorldPublicOpinion.org.

That mentality sheds some light on why al Qaeda, dispersed and under U.S. assault, can continue to draw recruits. "Our research does show that anti-American feelings do make it easier for al Qaeda to operate and to grow in the Muslim world," says Kull, a leading analytical pollster of international trends.

The attitudes studied explain, in part, why an average of 74 percent of those surveyed want the United States to "remove its bases and military forces from all Islamic countries"; 92 percent of people interviewed in Egypt thought so--the highest such total. About half of those surveyed favor attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq, the Persian Gulf, and Afghanistan. Again, Egyptians were most likely to support hitting U.S. forces in the region.

But majorities--most of them strong ones--oppose attacks on American or other civilians.

Still, the survey found considerable doubt among Muslim publics that al Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attacks in America.

And though most resist the idea of attacks on civilians, the survey found that significant majorities are backing some of al Qaeda's goals, including to "stand up to America and affirm the dignity of the Islamic people"; to "require Islamic countries to impose a strict application of Sharia" (Islamic) law; and to "keep western values out of Islamic countries."

Though a deep gulf separates typical worldviews in the United States and these Islamic nations, the survey results do show strong support among Muslims for greater trade and interaction with the rest of the world and for having "a democratic political system."

In-home interviews for the study were conducted between December 2006 and February 2007. The sample size was 1,000 or more people each in Egypt, Indonesia, and Morocco, and 611 in Pakistan--in all cases large enough so that the findings are considered statistically reliable.