text: New government-run religious TV states, Nour A-Sham (Light of Syria), to broadcast Islamic religious programming, Ramadan sermons.
  Published: JULY 31, 2011 23:08
  RELATED:'Tank assault on Syria's Hama kills at least 80'Worldwide observance of Ramadan to begin Meanwhile, 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 clerics, trying to subdue the popular uprising through religious argumentation.
  "The clerics 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 clerics to get legitimacy, and Assad's is no exception."
  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 death toll 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.
  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.
  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 Muslim 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 clerics who favor the status quo.
  "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 clerics 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.
  Al-Bouty, 82, even went so far as to condone forcing protesters to bow down to a portrait of Bashar Assad, a punitive measure used last week by security forces against protesters in the city of Duma is southern Syria. Al-Bouty had declared that "those who call for toppling the regime want to topple Islam."
  In response, furious residents of Deir A-Zor, a town in northeastern Syria, burned Al-Bouty's books in a public ceremony on Friday, saying that his religious rulings legitimized the regime's brutality.
  But analysts warned that Assad is playing with fire by appealing to religious passions. Al-Assad himself is an Alawaite, a heterodox Muslim breakaway sect whose adherents account for less than 15% of Syria's population and aren't regarded as true Muslims by many.
  Hamid noted that Assad had previously tried to delegitimize the protesters as extremist Islamists in a bid to garner the support of Syrian liberals and Christians. Christians, who account for 10% of Syria's population, have been wary about joining the revolutions for fear that the country's Sunni majority will replace the Ba'ath regime with a Muslim one hostile to other religions.
  "We shouldn't overdo the Islamic angle," Hamid said. "The Muslim Brotherhood is playing a significant roll in the protests, but the regime wants to use the specter of Islamic danger to recruit Christians and secularists to its side."