Bush understood that there was a real threat in Iraq from the al Qaeda training camps, and also understood that keeping the war effort within Muslim territory would publicly reveal the nature of al Qaeda to the rest of the Arab/Muslim world, and publicize it more effectively via Arabic media than the same action in Afghanistan. Now, we are seeing the wisdom of the approach. According to a number of sources there has been a "rising tide of anger in the Islamic world toward Al Qaeda and its affiliates" by "religious scholars, former fighters, and militants ... alarmed" by Al Qaeda's takfir and killing of Muslims in Muslim countries, especially Iraq.
Noman Benotman, a former Afghan Arab and militant of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, went public with an open letter of criticism to Ayman al-Zawahiri in November 2007 after persuading imprisoned senior leadership of his former group to enter into peace negotiations with the Libyan regime. While Ayman al-Zawahiri announced the affiliation of the group with Al Qaeda in November 2007, the Libyan government released 90 members of the group from prison several months later after "they were said to have renounced violence."
In 2007, around the sixth anniversary of September 11, Sheikh Salman al-Ouda, a Saudi religious scholar and one of the fathers of the Sahwa, the fundamentalist awakening movement that swept through Saudi Arabia in the '80s, delivering a personal rebuke to Osama bin Laden. Al Ouda addressed Al Qaeda's leader on MBC, a widely watched Middle East TV network, asking him
My brother Osama, how much blood has been spilt? How many innocent people, children, elderly, and women have been killed ... in the name of Al Qaeda? Will you be happy to meet God Almighty carrying the burden of these hundreds of thousands or millions [of victims] on your back?
In 2007, the imprisoned Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif, an influential Afghan Arab, "ideological godfather of Al Qaeda", and former supporter of takfir, sensationally withdrew his support from al Qaeda with a book Wathiqat Tarshid Al-'Aml Al-Jihadi fi Misr w'Al-'Alam (Rationalizing Jihad in Egypt and the World).
Usama Hassan, an Imam in London and former supporter of Al Qaeda who traveled to Afghanistan to train as jihadi was alienated by the July 2005 bombings in London and now preaches against bin Laden and helped launch the Quilliam Foundation.
According to Pew polls, support for Al Qaeda has been dropping around the Muslim world in recent years. The numbers supporting suicide bombings in Indonesia, Lebanon, and Bangladesh, for instance, have dropped by half or more in the last five years. In Saudi Arabia, only 10 percent now have a favorable view of Al Qaeda, according to a December poll by Terror Free Tomorrow, a Washington-based think tank.
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