Poll shows bin Laden’s support was declining in Muslim world

Osama bin Laden's death deals a major setback to Islamic terror groups around the world, counter-terror experts agree. But among ordinary Muslims, the al Qaeda leader appears to have suffered a clear decline in popularity in recent years.

A Pew poll conducted a month ago in six predominantly Muslim countries found strikingly low levels of support for bin Laden--far lower than what the same survey recorded back in 2003.

Only 34 percent of Muslims in the Palestinian territories expressed confidence in bin Laden to do the right thing in world affairs, according to the recent poll. In 2003--not long after bin Laden had rocketed to post-9/11 world prominence--that number was 72 percent.

A similar decline was seen among Indonesian Muslims, where those numbers went from 59 percent in 2003 to 26 percent last month. Likewise, a big drop-off occurred in Jordan, where confidence in bin Laden went from 56 percent to 13 percent--with a big intermediate trough in 2006, after suicide attacks by al Qaeda members in Amman, the capital.

Perhaps most crucially, the numbers in Pakistan--often seen as the epicenter of the fight against Islamic terrorism--fell from a high of 52 percent in 2005 to just 18 percent last year. (This year's numbers aren't yet in for Pakistan.)

There's no question that the al Qaeda leader retained enormous sway among the small population of radical Islamists eager to wage jihad against the West--and that his death will dramatically undercut that movement. But among the Muslim world as a whole, bin Laden's death may have come at a time when his broader influence was already on the wane.

(In an image taken from a video broadcast, Dec. 24, 1998, Osama bin Laden speaks during an interview at an undisclosed location in Afghanistan.: ABC News/AP)