After Egypt, political Islam faces its sternest test It was not just the tumultuous crowds in Tahrir Square that cheered last week's implosion of Mohamed Morsi and mainstream Islamism in the Arab world's most populous country. As the coup d"état in Cairo unfolded, Bashar al-Assad was doing a war dance on the Muslim Brotherhood's grave. "What is happening in Egypt is the fall of what is known as political Islam," the Syrian president gloated to a newspaper mouthpiece of his regime, which is locked in savage combat with a rebellion that is being hijacked by Sunni Islamist groups. There is no doubt the pan-Islamist Brotherhood, a mythic movement since its foundation in 1928, has spectacularly self-destructed barely a year after Mr Morsi was elected president by a narrow majority. The Islamist political bandwagon, which picked up speed once the Arab spring upheavals placed the Brotherhood and like-minded groups at or near the centre of political gravity, has definitely seized up. Does the hubris of the Brotherhood in the land of its birth herald a setback for political Islam across the broader Middle East? The Morsi meltdown was as extraordinary as his ascent. He was only the second choice of the Brothers after Khairat al-Shater, their deputy supreme guide, was banned from running - and instead ended up as the go-to head of a shadow Brotherhood government. These pan-Islamists, with their siren call that "Islam is the solution," were supremely organised as a semi-underground opposition. Yet once in power they seemed unable to find the levers of governance, instead devoting energy to a march through the institutions, with loyalty and secretiveness rather than efficiency and accountability as their watchwords. In the chaos after the 2011 revolution that overthrew the army-backed dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, Mr Morsi ended up in contest with an ancien regime holdover. While that meant he could only win with the support of liberals, leftists and secular youth activists, he decided against including them in a coalition for change, instead promoting a sectarian power grab behind a rambling discourse of impertinent paternalism. Mr Morsi and the Brotherhood's biggest bet, paradoxically, was that they could co-opt the army, by ringfencing its privileges inside the Islamist-inspired constitution they rammed through in November. But the Brothers - and their gerontocrat leaders - misjudged the diversity of a young society. Egypt's flexible generals did not make that mistake, and their action rearranged the regional furniture. Saudi Arabia, built on an alliance of absolute monarchy and Wahhabi Muslim absolutism, greeted the coup with unusual alacrity, delighted at the failure of a rival brand that purported to combine Islam and democracy. The United Arab Emirates, in the middle of a crackdown on the Brotherhood, could scarcely contain its glee. Sultan al-Qassemi, an Emirati commentator, tweeted that "Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak tried to get rid of the Brotherhood. Only Morsi succeeded. As the Saudis, Emiratis and Kuwait pledge $12bn to Egypt, the Brotherhood's former financial sponsors in Qatar and Turkey look to be the main losers, as region-wide tremors ripple from Gaza to Rabat. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the emir behind Qatar's activist Arab spring policy, abdicated last month in favour of his son - who has fired a prime minister identified as sympathetic to the Brotherhood. Persistent reports say Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an influential preacher close to the Brotherhood, is no longer welcome in Doha. The gas-rich emirate is pilloried on Twitter in a caricature showing the deposed Mr Morsi scurrying towards a Qatar Airways flight under a fusillade of shoes. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the neo-Islamist prime minister of Turkey, who has cast his country's lot with Syria's rebels, was also a Morsi ally. "There cannot be such a thing as a democratic coup," he said, mindful of the overmighty Turkish generals he has brought to heel. But like Mr Morsi, Mr Erdogan stands accused of interpreting a majority at the ballot box as authority to ride roughshod over society. For Turkey's prime minister, last month's Taksim Square rebellion was an internationally orchestrated prelude to a coup; unsurprisingly, he summoned all his top aides to an emergency meeting last week on the events in Cairo. But if mainstream Islamism is found wanting in the 21st century, there is no evidence Arabs believe Wahhabism is the face of their future. The way the Saudis and their allies throw their billions of dollars around (as well as how Qatar deployed its wealth) shows they know that too - and that they are not immune to a Tahrir or a Taksim. They want to drive the Brothers back into the catacombs and radicalise the way Islamists view democracy, as a western trick to keep them from power. The message they want to send is what Essam al-Haddad, Mr Morsi's foreign policy adviser, wrote on Facebook last week as the coup unfolded: that this "message will resonate throughout the Muslim world loud and clear: democracy is not for Muslims."