By LAURA STEVENS
BERLIN—President Barack Obama and the U.S. are increasingly unpopular in the Muslim world, according to a 22-nation survey released Thursday.
The Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project found that Muslim nations hold an overwhelmingly negative view of the U.S., with only 17% of those surveyed in Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt expressing a positive view—a five-year low for the Egyptians.
Mr. Obama has also lost support, with every single Islamic country’s Muslim residents reporting a decline in confidence. Only 8% of Pakistani Muslims express faith in him, compared with 13% last year. Even Turkey, a NATO ally, saw confidence drop to 23% from 33%.
The results suggest that the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and its presence in Iraq continue to weigh on the Muslim world’s opinion of the U.S.
Many Muslims don’t just disagree with Washington’s foreign policy, they also view the U.S. as a threat, the survey found.
Outside the Muslim world, positive perceptions of the U.S. jumped in 2009 after Mr. Obama took office, and they remained high in 2010. In France, 73% said they had a favorable view of the U.S., while 63% said the same in Germany.
The survey, created in 2001, was conducted in more than 24,000 telephone and face-to-face interviews from April 7 to May 8.
Public opinion of the U.S. had already begun to shift to a more-positive opinion for the second term of the Bush administration among Europeans, but under the Obama administration, it leaped to the positive side, said Ingo Peters, a political science professor at the Free University Berlin who specializes in trans-Atlantic relationships.
“His new approach of listening to people, his different wordings, his openness in terms of listening, and taking into account what the other side says is received very gratefully, especially in Germany and in other European nations,” said Dr. Peters, who isn’t affiliated with the Pew survey. Nearly 90% of Germans surveyed said they approve of Mr. Obama’s policies.
In every country except for China, at least half the citizens said they were unsatisfied with their own country’s condition, but in the U.S. that number was 70% of Americans. Only China, Brazil, India and Poland thought their economic conditions were good. Citizens hold their governments, banks and themselves responsible for those conditions.
U.S. foreign policy continues to be seen as unilateral by the world, which also means that a median 32% of those surveyed thought that the U.S. considers other countries’ interests, up from 26% in 2007.
Write to Laura Stevens at laura.stevens@wsj.com