WASHINGTON, Sept 2: The reaction to the US invasion of Iraq in the Islamic world is almost entirely negative, said Shibley Telhami, a senior fellow at Washington's Brookings Institution.

He was addressing a select gathering of scholars, politicians and journalists on Wednesday at a Washington bookstore- The Politics and Prose. Another prominent US scholar, Prof Stephen Cohen, addressing the occasion, said that the Islamic world was going through an internal conflict pitching liberal Muslims against religious extremists.

"This clash of civilization within the Islamic world is happening in many Muslim countries including Pakistan," he said. The programme was organized to launch the revised versions of Prof Akbar S.

Ahmad's books Resistance and Control in Pakistan (on Waziristan) and Post Modernism and Islam. The proceedings were broadcast live by the C-Span, a mainstream American television channel.

"The vast majority of Muslims believe that the Iraqis are worse off now than they were under Saddam Hussein," said Mr Telhami. "They believe there is less democracy in Iraq now, less freedom and more violence. If you ask them whether the United States invaded Iraq for restoring democracy, they would say no. For peace? No. For reconstruction? No."

Michael Caroe, son of a former NWFP governor who wrote the book The Pathans, objected to labelling Pashtun tribesmen as terrorists. "They may be outlaws but they are not terrorists," he said. Akbar S. Ahmad agreed. "Even Pakistani officials are making this mistake. They are labelling everybody as terrorists."

Chuck Floyd, a Republican candidate for Congress, advised the Bush administration to engage the Muslims, particularly those in the United States. Prof Ahmad reminded the US establishment that without support from Muslim governments, America would not be able to fight Muslim extremists for more than 24 hours.

"If your worst enemies are Muslims, your best friends in the war against terror are also Muslims," said the Pakistani scholar who is now a professor at the American University in Washington.

He lamented the tendency of the western media to lump together the Islamic world "as one monolithic entity" and label everyone as terrorists. "There are religious Muslims, there are liberal Muslims, there are those who oppose the west and there are those who value their ties to the west.

"But what's more important to realize is that there are more than a billion Muslims in the world and they cannot simply be dismissed as terrorists," said Mr Ahmad. He said in Waziristan (where Pakistan is now conducting a military operation) there were three main pillars of power, the priest, the tribal chief and the political agent.

"Unfortunately, today the two traditional symbols of power are clashing with the political agent, who represents the state." Going back to the war in Iraq, Mr Telhami said the vast majority of Muslims believes that the United States went to Iraq "for oil and for controlling the Arab world."

"The United States must plan to withdraw as soon as possible and convince the Muslims that it has no imperialistic designs and did not go to Iraq for oil or for political control."