Koran Burning Threat Shows U.S.-Muslim Relations are Still Strained

September 10, 2010 -- Fifteen months ago, President Obama flew to Egypt in the heart of the Muslim world to pledge "a new beginning" in long-strained U.S.-Muslim relations."This cycle of suspicion and discord must end," Obama said in a speech broadcast around the globe.

On Thursday, after Obama went on ABC's Good Morning America and pressed the pastor of a Florida church not to run afoul of "our values as Americans" and burn Islamic holy books in protest, the pastor suspended his plan.

Terry Jones' Quran-burning threat, though, had already sparked flag-burning protests in Afghanistan and raised new questions about the state of U.S.-Muslim relations.

Despite Obama's efforts to bridge a gap that widened following the 2001 terrorist attacks, "we're a long way from Cairo," says former Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller, who has advised six secretaries of State.

In the time since Obama's speech in Egypt, "you'd be hard-pressed to say we've made a consequential dent in the way we're perceived," Miller says.

James Zogby of the Arab American Institute says it's worse than that. "We're back to where we were in the Bush era" when the start of U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, photographs of U.S. soldiers torturing Arab prisoners, and the indefinite detentions of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay inflamed passions and suspicions about U.S. intentions across the Muslim world.

Among Muslims, Zogby says, Obama's election brought "high expectations and he then raised those expectations" with the Cairo speech. Today, "those expectations have been dashed."

He and other Arab and Muslim experts cite a series of events, some within and some beyond Obama's control, that have raised tensions. Among them:

•A decision by the Transportation Security Administration in January to subject people from 14 mostly Muslim countries with known terrorism problems to additional security checks, including pat downs. Among the countries: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Yemen. The order, which was later rescinded, was imposed after a Nigerian passenger tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight near Detroit on Dec. 25, 2009.