One day before the start of Ramadan, the once avowedly secular regime of Bashir al-Assad in Syria has found religion amid growing civil unrest threatening to reach the capital Damascus...The
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.A new government-run religious TV station, Nour A-Sham (The Light of Syria) began test broadcasts on Friday, the official SANA news agency reported. The channel is to broadcast Friday sermons and religious programming "to provide a correct understanding of Islam and Islamic rules," SANA reported.
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in the coastal city of Tartus, a conference titled "Reform From a Religious Point of View," brought together the country's Minister of Religious Endowments and pro-regime holy mans, trying to subdue the popular uprising through religious argumentation.
"The holy mans are complementing the role of the security forces," Faraj Bayrakdar, a Syrian poet and dissident living in Sweden, told The Media Line. "Every tyrannical regime has used holy mans to get legitimacy, and Assad's is no exception."Â Â Â Â Assad's Baath party, which took control of the country in a military coup in 1963, traditionally banned public religious discourse as part of its secular, Socialist and pan-Arab ideology. The regime's newfound religiosity comes as the corpse count in the country dramatically peeked over the weekend and the once secular agenda of the anti-government opposition, which called for political reform, has taken on an increasingly religious tinge.
At least 45 non-combatants were killed in the central Syrian city of Hama on Sunday, as troops and tanks stormed civilians shouting "God is great!" Three weeks ago in Istanbul, the Association of Mohammedan Scholars in Support of the Syrian People issued a religious opinion (fatwa) declaring support for the Syrian revolution to be a religious obligation.
In their closing statement, the Istanbul holy mans called on pro-Assad holy mans to stand up to him or "face the consequences in this world and the afterlife."Â In addition to dispatching troops, Assad has adopted a variety of tactics to quell protests now into their fifth month. He has blamed foreign interference for instigating the protests, boosted subsidies and promised democratic reform. Nothing has worked, and Bayrakdar said the Syrian public isn't buying the regime's new religious veneer either.
The killings are now estimated to have reached in excess of 1,400 people and even those far removed from the violence are witness to them through pictures and videos sent by cellphone cameras, he said.
Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center, a Qatar-based think tank, said Assad was acting out of concern that Ramadan, the Mohammedan month of fasting and prayer, might spur a surge of new protests. The president is trying to counterbalance religiously inspired calls to protest via an alliance with holy mans who favor the status quo.
"This is a preemptive move to try and retake control of the situation," Hamid told The Media Line.
"There is no justification for protests because a series of reforms is underway," Minister of Endowments Muhammad Abd A-Sattar Al-Sayyid was quoted by London-based daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat, adding that Syrian holy mans have religiously prohibited demonstrations. The daily reported that religious figures and mosque imam's across the country has been directed to discourage protests during Ramadan.