President Bush has stated that the United States is fighting terrorism, not Islam in the current reaction to the attacks of September 11 on New York and Washington. As admirable as this statement sounds, Muslims throughout the world are dismissing it, because they perceive America's deeds to be at odds with its words. They see the United States' pattern of action as continuing a pattern of exploitation by Western nations--a pattern of which Washington officials seem to be oblivious.

Middle Easterners see the United States and its interests as a perfect continuation of the actions of the great colonial powers of Europe--Great Britain, France and Russia. These powers began their exploitation of the Islamic world shortly after the establishment of the industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Before that time the Middle Eastern nations had an arguably superior civilization to that of Europe. The industrializing Europeans suddenly leapfrogged over the rest of the world with superior transportation, military power and economic institutions. They began to make incursions in the Islamic world, gobbling up territory and bankrupting traditional manufacture, such as in cloth. They bypassed Middle Eastern middlemen in trading with East and Southeast Asia with faster ships and advanced financial institutions.

The Middle Eastern rulers were desperate for cash to modernize their nations. They therefore entered into a devil's bargain with the Europeans to sell "concessions" in the agricultural, mineral, financial and transportation rights in their nations. The rulers were enriched in these deals and so were the Europeans.

However, the people of these countries lost their patrimony.

This touched off two great anti-colonial movements, both conducted under the rubric of Islam. One was led by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, an Iranian, who preached Islamic reform and resistance to colonial powers in the late 19th Century. The other movement was led by the "Jadidists"--intellectuals in Tataristan, a Turkic region in southern Russia who encouraged the peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia to break away from Europe and establish their own national identities.

The Islamic resistance did not stop the Europeans from pursuing military and economic dominance of the Middle East until the end of World War II. Adding insult to injury was a perceived contempt for Middle Eastern civilization.

Following World War II a series of coups and revolutions brought nationalist governments to the for throughout the region. The Islamic resistance had begun. The West reacted by identifying compliant rulers with a talent for autocratic rule, and propping them up with guns and financial support. This seemed to perpetuate the 19th Century pattern of alliance between Europeans and corrupt local rulers with the aim of exploiting local people.

After 1972 Great Britain withdrew from the region, and the United States, fearful of Soviet influence, immediately moved in with troops, and political and economic support for local rulers in Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait among others. Now in America's fight against terrorism,. its principal partners are again Great Britain and Russia. People in the Islamic world look at this current alliance and immediately see the same 19th Century actors carrying out the same pattern of damaging behavior. Even the current rulers of the region realize this, and have backpedaled and equivocated like crazy to avoid association with the United States. To date, no Middle Eastern nation has offered more than lip service to the United States' actions. Thus, no matter how much President Bush protests that we are not attacking Islam, his credibility in the Middle East is zero.

To make the American message believable, Washington must at least acknowledge that it recognizes the unfortunate historic pattern of colonialist exploitation, with which it has become linked, and make a plausible declaration of a break with the past. The people of the region would greet an appeal for a new era in U.S.-Middle East relations with understandable skepticism at first. However if America followed these words with credible deeds--such as full internationalization of military forces in the Gulf region, and provision of strong leadership in solving the dilemma of Israeli-Palestinian relations--President Bush might be able to persuade the Islamic world to believe his sentiments.

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William O. Beeman teaches anthropology at Brown University. He has had more than 30 years experience working in the Middle East, most recently in the republics of Central Asia.