a

"Whoever brings religion to use for political or factional interests will fall anywhere in the world": Bashar al-Assad. Photo: Reuters

Beirut: The jubilation among opponents of Egypt's deposed Muslim Brotherhood president in Cairo was matched in the halls of power in Syria.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said the Egyptian events signified the fall of ''political Islam'' and a vindication of his government's fight against the two-year Syrian uprising.

Even as the Egyptian army was rounding up the Brotherhood's entire leadership, Syrian state media were quick to seize on an inescapable fact: that the most prominent of the leaders brought to power by a series of Arab popular revolts that inspired the Syrian uprising had met an ignominious downfall, yet Dr Assad, after becoming practiced at wielding uncompromising force against his opponents, was still standing.

In an interview with the pro-government newspaper Al Thawra Dr Assad said the fall of Egypt's president Mohammed Mursi proved Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood were unfit to rule, and drew comparisons to the movement against him in Syria, in which Islamists play a prominent role.

''Whoever brings religion to use for political or factional interests will fall anywhere in the world,'' Dr Assad said.

He was confident that nothing short of foreign military intervention would bring him down: ''The countries that conspire against Syria have used up all their tools. They have nothing left except direct intervention.''

It was dismaying for Dr Assad's Syrian opponents, as Dr Mursi has been an increasingly vocal supporter of the Syrian uprising.

''You cannot deceive everyone all the time,'' Dr Assad said, ''particularly the Egyptian people who have a civilisation dating back thousands of years and clear pan-Arab nationalist thought.''

However while many demonstrators in Egypt were secular liberals opposed to Islamist rule, many others were themselves Islamists angry that Dr Mursi had not gone further in pushing a religious agenda.

Dr Mursi's ouster was also awkward for the Syrian opposition as some of its most prominent Arab backers, including Saudi Arabia and even Qatar, seen as generally backing the Brotherhood, congratulated the interim president installed by the Egyptian army.

In a twist of unfortunate timing, the main exile Syrian opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, was meeting in Istanbul on Thursday, still trying to agree on a coherent leadership and convince Western backers it could be trusted with heavier weapons.

One of the biggest challenges for the opposition has been internal wrangling between the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and its allies with other factions who have accused them of monopolising power.

New York Times