In the words of Prof. Michael J. Lewis of Williams College, the author of an interesting book called "Architecture and the Violent Mind", "An embassy can speak to the world of America's freedom and openness, its confidence and prosperity or, as with the Kenya embassy , its fear". The State department is discouraging American citizens to travel to many Muslim countries. It has imposed all sorts of immigration controls on Muslim visitors to the US . The American government is spending vast sums of money on propaganda to improve the US image in these countries. But will it help to improve the relationship between the United States and the Islamic world? The answer clearly is no. Then, how can it be improved? In my opinion, it can be improved only by sincerely addressing the main issues which divide the United States and the Muslim world. What are they?

First of all, what is necessary is a change of attitude. America has a tendency to espouse a missionary zeal to rebuild the world in its own image. President Bush continuously talks about America's mission to spread freedom and democracy. He often gives the impression that he is talking from a pulpit--a moral high ground. (It is an illusion to think that America can speak of moral authority. A quick look at the history of the United States will prove this point . How can a nation morally justify the complete annihilation of its indigenous peoples, a legal system which for a long time endorsed slavery and racism -- millions of non-European immigrants were treated as sub-humans --, its wars of aggression in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, etc .killing millions of men, women and children, its overt and covert interventions in different parts of the world (examples: Iran and Chile) to prop up oppressive totalitarian regimes and now Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib?

America can boast of its wealth, its military might, its technological advances, its scientific achievements, its organisational skills but not of its moral authority unless of course, like most empires of the past it has a rather skewed interpretation of morality.) This political discourse is perceived in the Muslim world as a clear case of "self-serving idealism with an undercurrent of racism". It is often interpreted as America's misguided "master mentality" (Philosopher Val Plumwood of the University of Sydney). The Muslims tend to agree with John H. Koppel's assessment of this attitude, "When Bush says , that it is America's mission to bring freedom to the world--evidently at the point of a bayonet--he is actually advocating a new order in which the whole world is "free" to share his values, embrace his policies and follow his leadership. This curious concept of freedom actually amounts to global dictatorship." (International Herald Tribune, April 16, 2004.)

If America's so-called master mentality is offensive to the Muslims, equally exasperating are American arrogance and hypocrisy in the conduct of its foreign policy. Ever since President Harry Truman endorsed the plan to create the state of Israel in 1948, in the Muslim world, no other single issue has created more bitterness and more animosity to the United States than the issue of Palestine. Actually American policy to Israel clearly demonstrates America's hypocrisy and double standards. Whatever is Israel today, is entirely due to the United States. It is no longer the simple little homeland for the oppressed European Jews as envisioned by Theodor Herzl in his epoch making book "The Jewish State" (1896). Thanks to American generosity and double standards, today it is not only the most important military power in the Middle East as far as conventional armaments are concerned, but also possesses weapons of mass destruction in the form of nuclear bombs.

Through a series of military conquests and confiscation of land, Israel now possesses 78 per cent of former Palestine (In November 1947, because of intense American pressure a little over 50% of the territory -- a disproportionately high percentage considering the relative numbers of Jews and Arabs in the territory at that time -- was allotted to the future state of Israel by the UN) and militarily occupies the rest (22%), where three and a half million Palestinians are crammed in virtual concentration camps. If the Palestinians hoped that one day they will be allowed to establish a viable state on these occupied territories, then even that hope has now been dashed by Bush's endorsement to Sharon's latest colonial plan, which effectively means the annexation of much of the rest of West Bank as part of Greater Israel, destruction of the Palestinian society and containment of the Palestinian population in isolated enclaves -- more like cages -- behind high security walls as virtual slaves. (Even people living under apartheid in South African bantustans had greater freedom of movement).

I must confess, it is difficult for me to understand how a "benevolent empire" like that of the United States can flout all the UN resolutions on Palestine, endorse Sharon's terrorist attacks on innocent civilians, targeted assassinations and finally his mad design to destroy a helpless nation with arms donated by it and at the same time talk of human rights, democracy and morality. No country, however powerful it is, can give away Palestinian rights without their consent. No other issue resonates more in the Muslim world and no other issue touches the inner chord of the Muslim mind than the issue of the injustice done to the Palestinians. The Muslims also realise that the only country in the world which has the power to bring about a just settlement of this conflict is the United States. Therefore, until and unless this problem is resolved and the Palestinians are allowed to live with dignity in an independent Palestine, there is absolutely no question of winning the hearts and minds of the Muslims by the Americans.

Bush invaded Iraq on false pretences. First, it was to destroy weapons of mass destruction. (Of course, the Americans seem to forget that the US is the country which possesses the most powerful weapons of mass destruction of the world and that it is the only country that has so far used them) When no WMD was found, the excuse to invade Iraq was to fight terrorism. When it was proven that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers of New York, the rationale for the invasion was changed to the self-serving idealism of introducing rule of law, respect for human rights and democracy in the Muslim World.

Bush says, he wants to give rule of law to the Iraqis. What rule of law is he referring to? He is the first one who violates the rule of law. Bush claims to have the right "to designate any American citizen as enemy combatant --and thereupon detain that person in solitary confinement indefinitely, without charges, without a trial, without a right to counsel". As pointed out by one of the most prestigious American newspapers , " the road to Abu Ghraib began, in some ways, in 2002 at Guantanamo Bay. It was there that the Bush administration began building up a world-wide detention system, deliberately located on bases outside American soil and sheltered from public visibility and judicial review". Bush proclaims high legal ideals, yet he refuses to apply the Geneva Convention to Guantanamo prisoners and has obstinately refused the jurisdiction of the new International Criminal Court as far as US citizens are concerned. What reflects even better his total disregard for the rule of law and human rights, is when in the 2003 State of the Union address, he uttered the chilling words, more than 3000 suspected terrorists " have been arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: They are no longer a problem for the United States".

A few days before the broadcast by the CBS on April 28 of the photographs of Iraqi prisoners being tortured and abused by the Americans at the Abu Ghraib prison, he said that the Americans had accomplished a mission, which was the removal Saddam Hussein. "As a result", he said, "there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq." Now, we know that those torture chambers and rape rooms had been functioning since the invasion under a different management . American occupation forces, who apparently were imbued with "lofty humanitarian values" had been systematically and brutally (Pentagon has until now confessed to 25 deaths in custody) torturing prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places as recently confirmed by the Red Cross. (Even though the Red Cross informed the Pentagon of " serious violations" of basic human rights by the US military as early as May 2003, it took no actions).

Alerted by some soldiers that there existed photographs of these tortures, the Pentagon asked Major General Antonio Taguba to investigate the matter. The Taguba inquiry produced a 53-page report confirming widespread " sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" by US military. The Pentagon then tried to obstruct the release of the report to the public. So the fact that these crimes were being committed in the name of "giving freedom" was not enough to call for any serious action. It does not speak very highly of the Bush administration's "moral authority" to learn that only when the Pentagon became aware of the fact that photographs and videos showing such heinous crimes had been taken by someone and that they could embarrass the Pentagon , it ordered a proper investigation. This goes to prove the contention that human life and dignity are of no importance to the Americans except when their own lives and dignity are involved.

Bush has given to understand in many statements that he is God's instrument to introduce democracy in the Middle East and beyond. Such ideological claptrap bears no relationship to reality. "Democracy must grow organically from within a society." It is a home-grown product with special religious and cultural characteristics of the place where it grows, -- it cannot be imposed through the barrel of American guns from outside. Bush must have a low opinion of the Iraqis' intelligence. If democracy means freedom to choose, accountability and transparency, any Iraqi government coming out of this process will first of all throw the occupiers out of the country, take control of the resources and ask them to close down the bases in the country. As a response to Bush's "lofty vision thing" for spawning democracy in the Middle East, I should say that as long as the American government does not change its current policy with regard to issues like Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, future Muslim democracies (if there can be Christian democracies and Jewish democracies, why can't there be Muslim democracies?) are likely to be more anti-American than the current governments. Democracy means what people want, not what the United States wants. Actions speak louder than a few empty words on democracy.

Actually the real reason for the invasion was very simple. It had nothing to do with being a "force for good with a liberating mission". It was to turn Iraq into a strategic American ally (a puppet), i.e., a virtual colony, so that from the American bases in Iraq, America could protect Israel and control all the countries in the Middle East and Central Asia. Of course, in the process the vast oil resources of Iraq will come in very handy for the United States. That would go a long way towards the fulfilment of the dream of all the American governments over the last fifty years or so, i.e., to spread Pax Americana to the Middle East and beyond to serve the political and economic interests of Washington. This is a long-term plan and it cannot be realised in a short period of time, hence the insistence on the need for the occupation forces to continue in Iraq .In March, Jay Garner, the first Iraqi pro-consul told the BBC that " he was sacked in part because he wanted to hold quick elections. His superiors wanted to privatize Iraqi industries first--as part of a plan that was drawn up in late 2001". He surely had Iraq's oil industries in mind.

The latest argument put forward by the Bush administration for continuing the occupation is that the withdrawal of American forces would lead to a civil war in Iraq, because of ethnic and religious rivalries. " The implication is that several loose and ethnically incompatible bits of the Ottoman Empire were stuck together by British imperial officials." This is merely an excuse to buy time to finish the job, i.e. to complete the colonisation of Iraq. In the words of William Pfaff of the International Herald Tribune , " The modern Iraqi state is roughly coterminous with Mesopotamia, the oldest of the Middle Eastern civilisations. It emerged 3000 to 5000 years ago in the fertile land along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and remained a coherent cultural and political entity over the millenia, through the brilliant era of Arab Abbaside caliphate and its successors in Baghdad, continuing through the Ottoman Empire that followed, lasting until 1918". Therefore, the Iraqis are perfectly capable of looking after themselves with some initial help from the UN to sort out the mess created by the American invasion.

There is, unfortunately , a rising tide of Islamophobia in the United States. In the West, there is much talk about the Islamic World as though it is a homogenous unit. Actually, there is nothing like that. The Muslims (1.4billon people) live in dozens of different countries with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. There are different strains of thought among them -- some conservative, some liberal and yet others with leftist tendencies. In some countries, there are small dissident groups concerned with Islamic creed, who are violent but except Al Qaida, until recently, their activities were confined within the borders of their own countries. Again until recently, the Muslims, in general, were not radically anti-American. This is true, many of them disagreed with US on Palestine.

Most of the Muslims are painfully aware of their wounded civilisation's deficiencies. Many of them firmly believe in reforming their societies. Currently a war of ideas is being fought out in the Muslim world. They realise that progress will never be achieved as long as the political process is not transparent and their rulers are not accountable to the people. Many of these rulers are under the hegemonic influence of the United States, hence the distrust of any change that comes from the United States.

I do not think that the Americans except perhaps the fundamentalist evangelical groups singled out the Muslims as their enemies simply because of their being Muslims but because of America's so-called national interest in controlling the natural resources of the Muslim countries, particularly the ones with vast oil resources. America's powerful industrial-military complex also needed a new enemy after the disappearance of the Soviet empire. In a way, Huntington's theory on the clash of civilisations came in very handy for this purpose. In the pursuit of its goal of global hegemony, the US devised a geo-political strategy which required intervention in the political affairs of these countries and the establishment of client states like Israel, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Although the original intention was not to antagonise the Muslim World as a whole, its unconditional support to Israel in everything it does against the Arabs, atrocities committed by its troops in Afghanistan and its preventive war on Iraq and its aftermath have humiliated, infuriated and subsequently united the Muslims all across the globe in their hatred for the United States. The only way the US can improve its image in the Muslim World is first of all, to create a viable Palestinian state, abandon its visions of empire (it cannot be a model democracy and an oppressive empire at the same time), close down its military bases in and around the Muslim countries and allow the United Nations to do its job in an effective manner. Of course, in order to do all this, the US must first of all formulate an energy policy which will not force it to undertake continuous colonial adventures in the Muslim world.