Baathists are Arab supremacists: Arabs über alles.
Militant Islamists are Islamic supremacists: Muslims über alles.
As Baathism has lost its momentum, it has merged at the margins with Militant Islamism. One example: When Saddam Hussein had “Allahu Akhbar” inscribed on the Iraqi flag. Another example: the creation of the Islamist al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades within “secular” Fatah.
Baathists take comfort in the fact that when Muslims around the world pray they face Mecca – in Arabia.
Final point: Syria’s Assad is an Allawite. Allawites are a Shia minority sect in Syria, an overwhelmingly Sunni country. That, too, provides a foundation for the alliance with Iran’s Militant Islamist Shia mullahs.