OPINION

DECEMBER 29, 2010

Is Obama's Muslim Outreach Working?

Public support for terrorism is still dropping in Islamic countries, but more slowly than it did during the Bush years.

By JOSHUA MURAVCHIK

For two years, President Obama has labored to improve America's standing in the eyes of the Muslim world. He hasn't gotten anywhere with the governments of Iran, Syria, the Palestinian Authority or perhaps any other Muslim country. But with their publics, Mr. Obama is much better liked than his predecessor, which has yielded more favorable ratings for the U.S. in general.

This is worth noting—even though the people choose their government in very few Muslim-majority states—because America's popularity affects public approval of terrorism. Even where people cannot vote, the amount of terrorism will be influenced by whether terrorists are seen as heroes or villains.

A poll out this month from the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project sheds interesting light on attitudes toward terrorism in several Muslim countries. The results are mildly encouraging for America—but not necessarily for Mr. Obama and his outreach efforts.

The survey gauges attitudes toward three crucial terrorism-related subjects: al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and suicide bombings. The good news is that the proportion of pro-terror opinion continues to decline. The bad news is that the minority holding such views remains considerable.

For example, 20% of Egyptians, 23% of Indonesians and 34% of Jordanians say they hold favorable views of al Qaeda. Asked whether they have confidence that bin Laden will "do the right thing regarding world affairs," 19% of Egyptians, 25% of Indonesians and 14% of Jordanians responded positively. On the question of suicide bombing, 20% of Egyptians, 20% of Jordanians and 15% of Indonesians said it is "often" or "sometimes" justified (as opposed to "rarely" or "never").

At first glance, these results seem to reflect well on Mr. Obama's engagement project. A few years ago, these measures of support for terrorism were much higher. But the Pew report also offers a time-sequence chart, dating back to 2003, of answers to the question about bin Laden.

It shows an encouraging decrease in support for terrorism—but the largest drop came when George W. Bush was president. The sharpest decrease in terror support in Indonesia, Turkey and Lebanon came between 2003 and 2005; in Jordan, between 2005 and 2006; and in Nigeria and Egypt between 2006 and 2007.

Only in Pakistan was the largest drop between 2008 and 2009—but the poll was taken in April 2009, so Mr. Bush was in office more than Mr. Obama during that one-year interval. From 2009 to 2010, the one full-year interval of Mr. Obama's presidency for which Pew offers data, the decline was negligible everywhere except in Jordan, where the drop-off was smaller than it was from 2005 to 2006.

What does this all mean? More studies are needed before we can go much beyond guesswork. Both Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama wanted to drive down support for terrorism among Muslims. Mr. Bush's approach was to knock heads together and speak bluntly of the need for societal change. Mr. Obama's approach has been to curry favor with publics and rulers alike. Mr. Bush's approach may have worked better.

A ground-breaking Gallup poll conducted in 2001 and 2002 revealed that hostility toward the U.S. was rife in the Muslim world even before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. This, I believe, reflected U.S. support for Israel and for unpopular Muslim rulers, as well as resentment that America had eclipsed the Islamic world in power and achievement, contradicting the Quran's promise that Muslims will be supreme.

Perhaps for a brief moment after 9/11, many Muslims hoped that bin Laden had found the way to fight back against the infidels. In that case, Mr. Bush's fierce response may have quashed such hope and restored some realism.

Of course it may be that the critical factor in changing attitudes has not been U.S. policies but the actions of the terrorists themselves—who regularly turn their bombs against Muslims in Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan and elsewhere.

The data are too slender to sustain the claim that Mr. Bush's policies succeeded in turning much of the Muslim world against terrorism. But they are substantial enough to inform our understanding that Mr. Obama's approach has achieved little in this regard.

Mr. Muravchik is a fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.