Thus the bombings partly represent an extremist attempt to co-opt a pacifistic movement with deep resonance throughout the Arab world. Speaking of bin Laden, AbuKhalil says that "he is now more attuned to public opinion than Karl Rove."

As Barber says, "The rage has been there for a long time, but until somebody started throwing bombs people didn't pay attention. When rage and anger and resentment and fear go unrecognized, it does escalate into this jihadic war against both the virtues and vices of the Western world."

For its part, McDonald's is trying hard to counter that rage by emphasizing its local roots as opposed to the American origins that made it popular in the first place. "You will see companies that close down for prayers a certain number of times a day, that have a dietary regime so that the products being sold meet all local requirements, that have separate seating for men and women," Zeidman says.

In countries where there have been bombings, the restaurants have taken out ads to say that the franchises are owned and staffed by local people. Several years ago, McDonald's in France ran an ad using a corpulent cowboy to mock America while stressing that its food was made in France with French ingredients. Earlier this year, McDonald's France attempted to respond to concerns that it was bringing American-style obesity to sleek French children by taking out ads warning parents not to take their kids to the restaurant more than once a week.

Will this approach work? The answer usually depends on how one feels about McDonald's in the first place. Those like Watson or Zeidman who are generally positive about the company think the ads will help, while the company's critics see them as pandering.

And bombers operate under their own, far less discerning, logic. After all, it's not just McDonald's -- other fast-food outlets associated with America have been targeted, too. On Nov. 12, two Pizza Huts and a U.S.-owned restaurant called Winners were bombed in Lebanon, part of a campaign that began in May with an attack on a Kentucky Fried Chicken. One KFC was trashed in April in Cairo, and another was burned last October in Karachi. These attacks, Elahee says, "are a bad sign not just for McDonald's but for all U.S. businesses, because it shows that people in other countries are becoming increasingly hostile to American business."

The sheer ubiquity of McDonald's makes it a much easier target, though, and more and more often, Islamists are specifically designating it as the enemy.

A month after 9/11, an article in the online Islamist magazine Khilafah declared, "The restaurant chain McDonald's and the military aircraft manufacturer McDonnell-Douglas have come to represent, respectively, two devices that are used for ensuring American global reach ... The fast food chains have become imperial fiefdoms, sending emissaries far and wide."

AbuKhalil says that last week, an Arabic Web site that frequently disseminates messages from al-Qaida was festooned with the logos of various American companies and instructions to join the boycott. So it doesn't surprise him, he says, that "lately all the attacks have been against American companies."

Peter Bergen, the author of "Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden," has noticed something similar. Before the recent, highly publicized Osama bin Laden audiotape there was another one -- allegedly from bin Laden, though it was never proven -- that Bergen says didn't get much play. That one called for attacks on Western economic targets. Attacks on McDonald's, he says, would be part of that campaign. "If I was running a McDonald's in Pakistan right now, I'd seriously consider closing it down."

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