Mohammed has voiced hopes of leading a democratic transition, as Spain's King Juan Carlos I did across the Strait of Gibraltar, but it won't be easy. The king is squeezed between his father's makhzen allies, who are fighting to retain their privileges, and the growing Islamist movement. The Islamists aim to use the democratic space he has opened to check his modernizing policies and impose their notions of Islamic tradition. The democratic parties, after decades in the shadow of the palace and the police under Hassan, are too fragmented and weak to be effective allies for his successor. Parties compete more freely in elections now, but public interest remains low: The turnout in special elections for Parliament last year ran under 20 percent.

The conflicts, and ironies, flowing from the kingdom's political alignments were illustrated by the fate of plans to revise the family-law code to increase women's rights. After they were met with a huge Islamist rally even bigger than the recent one, the timorous reformist prime minister and cabinet backtracked. Mohammed eventually forced through a progressive revision of the code -- but only by royal fiat.

The contradictions -- and crisis -- in Morocco today are starker still regarding state security and human rights. The new king released most political prisoners and even compensated 6,000 victims of torture under his father. Yet after last year's al-Qaida attacks, some 7,000 suspected Islamic extremists were arrested and more than 2,000 convicted of security offenses, allegedly after widespread torture. There is something paradoxical about a state that compensates victims of past abuses even as it tortures new ones. Yet the large numbers detained also revealed the extensive infiltration of Morocco by militant organizations, to which the government had preferred to close its eyes.

Despite the resistance and threats his government faces, Mohammed has fought tenaciously to impose reforms. He has freed the press, established free-trade agreements with the United States and the European Union, and taken steps to liberalize the economy. Recently he called on Parliament to pass political party and electoral laws, to help create two partisan blocs of right and left capable of forming a strong, cohesive and popular parliamentary majority and opposition.

The United States is trying to help. After largely ignoring Morocco in the 1990s, it is again offering development assistance. American-funded programs are improving job training, bettering teacher preparation, and combating illiteracy. American organizations are training political parties and members of Parliament. They are also helping to build civic organizations competing in the slums with Islamist groups, who provide social services to communities the state has neglected.

Yet America's image is so negative in Morocco today that U.S. initiatives receive a hostile reception, if their existence is even known. The lively, reform-minded press that has arisen under the new king enthusiastically exposes scandals and agitates for more democracy. But it also contains pages of articles that salute "the untamable rebels" fighting the United States in Iraq and that condemn U.S. and Israeli policy on the Palestinians.

Positive coverage of U.S. assistance is rare. More typical is a cartoon mocking President Bush as a cowboy teaching a class called "democracy." He is firing pistols to stop Arab leaders begging to go to the bathroom from leaving -- even as they pee on the floor! An editorial in a leading weekly likened participating in Powell's democracy forum -- a showcase for U.S. regional initiatives -- to joining the royal makhzen. (Not surprisingly, in this atmosphere, only groups associated with parties already in Parliament said they would attend the conference, aborting hopes that Islamist groups could be drawn into a dialogue and into the democratic fold.)

Unfortunately, Moroccans echo their media's sentiments about the United States. In recent focus groups conducted by my polling firm for the Council on Foreign Relations, college-educated Casablancans rejected Bush administration positions on Iraq and Palestine out of hand and called America an arrogant bully. They were ignorant and cynical about U.S. aid programs for Morocco and developing nations in general. Although the educated elite is a key constituency for reform and vocally supported democratic change, they also feared that American efforts to promote democracy were intervention by another name. Surprisingly, many were warm to local Islamists, seeing them as moral voices in politics, and most of the women in the groups wore head scarves. Distressingly, even such educated Moroccans blamed their country's and region's problems on Americans, Jews and Zionists. (We did not study less educated Moroccans, but national surveys conducted in 2003 and 2004 by the Pew Global Attitudes Project and Zogby International found that Moroccans in general had similar negative opinions of the U.S.)

Yet the group results also offered an eye-opener for those who think that anti-Americanism is inevitable in Muslim countries like Morocco. While some participants in the groups criticized American mores, dress and culture, many more voiced nostalgia for the positive views of America they used to have and sadness that things had changed in recent years. Moroccans hate us not for who we are but for what they perceive we do.

Does this matter? It does, enormously. What's happening in Morocco is typical of developments in many Muslim countries, where anti-Americanism has reached a level that interferes with America's ability to achieve its foreign-policy goals. After decades of backing local autocrats for stability's sake, we are finally doing the right thing, pushing political, economic and educational reforms to stem the despair that feeds Islamic militancy. Yet the rising hostility to America in Muslim lands is undermining our efforts to better their situation and our security. Unless we learn to listen, speak and act more wisely, the future face of Islam may be an angry one, in which the hipsters of Bodega are one with the demonstrators of Rabat.

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