President Obama is presiding over the end of American dominance in the Middle East. Across the region, U.S. power is receding — and radical Islam is filling the void. Mr. Obama has betrayed our allies and emboldened our enemies. He is slowly helping make the Middle East safe for jihadists, thereby undermining America’s national security.

Contrary to the spin of the mainstream media, the fever that is sweeping the Middle East is not some long-suppressed desire for political liberty. These are not secular democratic revolutions.

Instead, they represent the fury of subjugated peoples who have been deeply embittered by decades of autocratic rule, corruption and the pro-Western policies of their leaders. Many of the demonstrators despise America and Israel. They want one-man, one-vote democracy only once — to erect a theocratic state based on Shariah law.

As the leader of the Free World, Mr. Obama should be standing against this reactionary tidal wave. Instead, he is openly encouraging and embracing it. The result is that the United States is losing its influence in the Middle East.

In Tunisia, Mr. Obama abandoned President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, a friend of the United States. In Egypt, Mr. Obama abandoned President Hosni Mubarak, who for 30 years was a staunch ally of Washington. Mr. Mubarak may have been a tinpot dictator, but he supported America in the war on terrorism, cracked down on Muslim extremists and kept the peace with Israel. His downfall has led to a surge in new Islamic fundamentalist parties — especially those that champion a virulent Salafism. Presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled to be held in September. Cairo’s liberals admit that the expected big winner will be the Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks to forge an Islamic regime and break the peace treaty with Israel. In Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, an ally in the fight against Al Qaida, is on the verge of being overthrown by jihadists.

In Iraq, U.S. troops are being withdrawn precipitously. They will all be gone by year’s end. The power vacuum is being filled by Iran. Baghdad’s government says its laws must correspond with the Koran. Half of Iraq’s Christians have been exterminated or expelled; the other half lives in fear. Muqtada al-Sadr, the fiery anti-American Shiite cleric, wields considerable clout behind the scenes. The war has cost more than 4,000 U.S. soldiers dead and 30,000 wounded. Yet Iraq is under Tehran’s sphere of influence.

In Afghanistan, Mr. Obama’s surge has failed. It is becoming another Vietnam — a military quagmire squandering precious American blood and treasure in a futile effort at nation-building. Al Qaida is gone from that Godforsaken land. It has dispersed to Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan. The Taliban are resurgent. They are taking advantage of Washington’s severe rules of engagement, which make it almost impossible for U.S. forces to win.

Other allies also are beginning to turn away from America. Turkey’s Islamic government is increasingly anti-Western and hostile to Israel. Ankara is drifting out of America’s orbit, pursuing a policy of neo-Ottomanism — the attempt to restore Turkey’s historic role as the defender of the region’s Muslims. Pakistan is seething with anti-Americanism. Lebanon is dominated by Hizbullah. Bahrain’s pro-U.S. king is facing a massive revolt. Jordan’s royal family is being threatened seriously for the first time in decades.

Mr. Obama’s inept foreign policy is starkly evident in Libya. His administration’s diplomacy has been confused and incoherent. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has admitted that there is “no vital national interest” at stake. In that case, why are we there? Our military is not an international charity; its purpose is not humanitarian intervention. This is a recipe for endless wars that will overextend and break America.

Mr. Obama insists that had he not ordered the airstrikes, the rebel stronghold of Benghazi would have been overrun by pro-Moammar Gadhafi loyalists. This would have led to a slaughter — a Libyan version of Srebrenica, where more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were butchered by Serb forces in 1995.

The president, however, is content to turn a blind eye to massacres in Sudan, Somalia and Syria. In fact, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ridiculously refers to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad as a “reformer.” Mr. Assad is the very opposite: a murderous anti-reformer whose security forces recently gunned down peaceful demonstrators. Yet the White House refuses to bomb Damascus. In short, Mr. Obama and his team are hypocrites.

Moreover, the Libyan campaign will only empower radical Islamists. Elements of the anti-Gadhafi rebels are al Qaeda insurgents; others are Libyan jihadists who fought in Iraq against U.S. forces. American pilots are risking their lives, and American taxpayers are funding a war on behalf of terrorist thugs who have American blood on their hands. The rebels’ goal is not just to topple the Libyan strongman. Many want an Islamist Libya — more radical and anti-Western than Col. Gadhafi’s crazed regime.

Mr. Obama has accomplished his primary foreign-policy goal: creating a post-American world. He is an academic leftist who believes that the United States must be constrained and ultimately weakened. Its might must be tethered to the United Nations in order to serve the “international community” — including the Muslim world, which he says has been the victim of Western imperialism. This kind of liberal guilt and self-hatred may play well with the media class. But from Teheran to Tripoli, Baghdad to Benghazi, Mr. Obama’s anti-Americanism only invites contempt from both our close friends and our mortal foes. Nobody respects weakness, even from a transnational progressive messiah.

Abboud al-Zomor — the former intelligence officer who supplied the bullets that killed President Anwar el-Sadat and is Egypt’s most notorious newly released prisoner — waxes enthusiastic about ending the violent jihad he once led.

“The ballot boxes will decide who will win at the end of the day,” Mr. Zomor said during an interview in his large family compound in this hamlet on Cairo’s western edge. “There is no longer any need for me to use violence against those who gave us our freedom and allowed us to be part of political life.”

In its drive to create a perfect Islamic state, his Islamic Group and other groups like it were once synonymous with some of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in Egypt. But they are now leaping aboard the democracy bandwagon, alarming those who believe that religious radicals are seeking to put in place strict Islamic law through ballots.

The public approval of the constitutional amendments on March 19 provided an early example of Islamist political muscle, the victory achieved in no small part by framing the yes vote as a religious duty. But perhaps the most surprising aspect of the Islamist campaign was the energy invested by religious organizations that once damned the democratic process as a Western, infidel innovation masterminded to undermine God’s laws.

Mr. Zomor, 64, with his bushy gray beard and nearly 30 years in prison, has emerged as a high-profile spokesman for that sea change since he was released on March 12.

He and other Salafis, or Islamic fundamentalists, rhapsodize about founding political parties and forging alliances with the more mainstream Muslim Brotherhood to maximize the religious vote.

Several reasons lie behind this remarkable turnabout, according to senior religious sheiks, junior members and experts.

Foremost is the desire to protect, if not strengthen, the second amendment of Egypt’s Constitution, which enshrines Shariah, or Islamic law, as the main source of Egyptian law. The parliament to be elected in September will guide the drafting of a new constitution.

“If the constitution is a liberal one this will be catastrophic,” said Sheik Abdel Moneim el-Shahat, scoffing at new demands for minority rights during a night class he teaches at a recently reopened Salafi mosque in Alexandria. “I think next they will tell us that Christians must lead Muslims in the prayers!”

Second, the Salafis arrived late to the revolution, with many clerics emphatically supporting President Hosni Mubarak and condemning the protesters.

Young Salafis rebelled — extremely rare for a group that reveres tradition and hierarchy.

“The majority of the Salafi youth were the people who actually said, ‘No, this is impossible, we have to be part of this, it is a just cause,’ ” said Sherif Abdel Naser, a 24-year-old Egyptian-American who now attends political classes three nights a week at Sheik Shahat’s cramped mosque.

The Salafi movement is inspired by the puritan Wahhabi school of Islam that dominates Saudi Arabia, whose grand mufti churned out a fatwa condemning the Arab uprisings as a Western conspiracy to destroy the Islamic world. But an array of philosophies exists under the Salafi umbrella, ranging from apolitical groups that merely proselytize on the benefits of being a good Muslim to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda’s No. 2, is an Egyptian Salafist.

Some Egyptians are convinced that the government released the likes of Mr. Zomor as a kind of bogeyman — to frighten the country about the possible downside of democracy. Mr. Zomor said Salafist violence was only a reaction to the repression of the Mubarak government, but he shocked many Egyptians by advocating punishments like amputating thieves’ hands.

In an example of fundamentalists now emerging into public light, the sons of Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheik who is serving a life sentence in the United States, convicted in a conspiracy to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993, recently addressed a conference at a five-star Cairo hotel, demanding that the United States release their ailing father.

“Somebody wants to give the impression that democracy will bring about the worst in Egypt,” said Hossam Tammam, an expert on Salafi groups.

He finds the threat exaggerated, but noted that the Salafis would be hampered in political participation because they did not accept the idea that all Egyptian citizens should enjoy equal rights. The Salafi model is based on medieval Islamic caliphates where minorities were protected but had to pay a tax for the privilege, and were barred from the military and many government positions, he said.

Some famous Salafi clerics have been preaching national unity and have said they would preserve the peace treaty with Israel. But more exclusionary thinking also emerges in sharp relief.

Sheik Mohamed Hussein Yacoub, a prominent Cairo cleric, generated outrage by labeling the referendum results as a “gazwa al-sanadiq,” or “conquest of the ballot boxes,” using a freighted Arabic word for conquest associated with Islam’s early wars. Egypt belongs to the observant, he said, and those who object could emigrate to North America.

He later claimed he was joking, but such attitudes are easy to find among Salafi foot soldiers. At the University of Alexandria, within sight of the sparkling Mediterranean, five bearded Salafi students set up a small table at the Faculty of Commerce on Tuesday to advocate the benefits of an Islamic state.

When a Christian student objected, one fundamentalist argued, “When we launch wars, we do it to strengthen our religion,” he said. “Will you fight alongside us to spread our religion?”

“I will be angry,” replied the other student.

”We cannot put God’s orders to a referendum,” said Ibrahim Mohamed, 21, one of the Salafi students. “Islam says adulterers must be stoned.”

Various Salafi groups have been taking the law on social issues into their own hands, including severing a teacher’s ear about 10 days ago in upper Egypt after accusing him of renting an apartment to prostitutes. And the army intervened on Monday to calm violence in the oasis of Fayoum that broke out after Salafists destroyed places selling beer and the owners shot a Salafi dead. Critics say the Salafi program is too religious to have broad appeal; while the Muslim Brotherhood frames its arguments in policy terms, the Salafis emphasize spiritual benefits that play well among the poor.

Alarmed by the violence, Ali Gomaa, Egypt’s grand mufti, is planning a conference of spiritual leaders in mid-April to try to establish consensual guidelines for separating religious and political discourse — for both Muslims and Christians.

Some experts hope the emergence of the Salafis will create a healthy attempt to reconcile Islam with democracy.

“The Salafis have realized that the only way for them to survive is to be politically engaged,” said Mr. Tammam, the expert. “If the Salafis are absorbed into the political system here, they can be reformed, but this will not eliminate radical thinking for good.”