Egypt clashes escalate over President Morsi's power grab

CAIRO Supporters and opponents of Egypt's president on Sunday grew more entrenched in their potentially destabilizing battle over the Islamist leader's move to assume near absolute powers, with neither side appearing willing to back down as the stock market plunged amid the fresh turmoil.

The standoff poses one of the hardest tests for the nation's liberal and secular opposition since Hosni Mubarak's ouster nearly two years ago. Failure to sustain protests and eventually force Mohammed Morsi to loosen control could consign it to long-term irrelevance.

• Egyptian protesters vow an end to Morsi's decrees
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• Egypt president Mohammed Morsi's powergrab brings angry clashes

Clashes between the two sides spilled onto the streets for a third day since the president issued edicts that make him immune to oversight of any kind, including that of the courts.

A teenager was killed and at least 60 people were wounded when a group of anti-Morsi protesters tried to storm the local offices of the political arm of the president's Muslim Brotherhood in the Nile Delta city of Damanhoor, according to security officials.

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Egypt: "A big and dramatic moment"

It was the first reported death from the street battles that erupted across much of the nation on Friday, the day after Morsi's decrees were announced. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, identified the boy as 15-year-old Islam Hamdi Abdel-Maqsood.

The tensions also dealt a fresh blow to the economy, which has suffered due to the problems plaguing the Arab world's most populous nation since Mubarak's ouster.

Egypt's benchmark EGX30 stock index dropped 9.59 percentage points Sunday in the first trading session since Morsi issued his decrees. The losses were among the biggest since the turbulent days and weeks immediately after Mubarak's ouster in a popular uprising last year. The loss in the value of shares was estimated at close to $5 billion.

The judiciary, the main target of the edicts, has pushed back, calling the decrees a power grab and an "assault" on the branch's independence. Judges and prosecutors stayed away from many courts in Cairo and other cities on Sunday.

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Egyptians protest Morsi power grab

But the nation's highest judicial body, the Supreme Judiciary Council, watered down its opposition to the decrees on Sunday. It told judges and prosecutors to return to work and announced that its members would meet with Morsi on Monday to try to persuade him to restrict immunity to major state decisions like declaring war or martial law or breaking diplomatic relations with foreign nations.

Morsi supporters insist that the measures were necessary to prevent the courts, which already dissolved the elected lower house of parliament, from further holding up moves to stability by disbanding the assembly writing the new constitution, as judges were considering doing. Both the parliament and the constitutional assembly are dominated by Islamists. Morsi accuses Mubarak loyalists in the judiciary of seeking to thwart the revolution's goals and barred the judiciary from disbanding the constitutional assembly or parliament's upper house.

CBS Correspondent Holly Williams reports that Morsi said the new powers would only be temporary, and he'll relinquish them next year when Egyptians elect a new parliament and vote on a new constitution. Many Egyptians accept that.

Opposition activists, however, have been adamant since the crisis first erupted that they would not enter a dialogue with Morsi's regime before the decrees are rescinded.

"Now the constitution they are preparing, it is for the Muslims only," George Ishaq, one of Morsi's political opponents, told Williams. "It's not fair ... So I say now, Morsi is not the president for all Egyptians. He's the president of the Muslim Brotherhood."

Protesters also clashed with police at Cairo's Tahrir Square, the birthplace of the mass protests that toppled Mubarak, and in the side streets and avenues leading off the plaza. The Interior Ministry, which is in charge of the police, said 267 protesters have been arrested and 164 policemen injured since the unrest began a week ago, initially to mark the anniversary of street protests a year ago against the nation's then-military rulers. Forty-two protesters were killed in those demonstrations.

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[Scotty3214]

Lets see if this works CBS website is a major pain in the ass.

Islamophobia: Thought Crime of the Totalitarian Future David Horowitz & Robert Spencer frontpagemag-com/upload/pamphlets/Islamophobia.pdf

"The Muslim Brotherhood in America: The Enemy Within." Frank Gaffney
muslimbrotherhoodinamerica-com/

SHORT LIST (See Full list Facebook page)
The Haj by Leon Uris
Muslim Mafia by Gaubatz and Sperry
Because They Hate by Brigitte Gabriel
"Slavery, Terrorism and Islam" and "Holocaust in Rwanda" by Peter Hammond
The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America by David Horowitz
Ivory Towers On Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America by Martin Kramer
The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism by Andrew G. Bostom
The Legacy of Jihad by Andrew G. Bostom MD
A Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas F. Madden
The Book of Jewish Knowledge by Nathan Ausubel
The New Moody Atlas of the Bible by Barry J. Beitzel
The Al Qaeda Reader by Raymond Ibrahim
Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law
Sahih al-Bukhari
The Koran: Pickthall
The Quran: Yusuf Ali: Translated by Prof. Syed Vickar Ahmed
Holy Qur'an with Commentary: Maulana Muhammad Ali
The Second Message of Islam by Mahmoud Mohamed Taha
Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington by Paul Sperry
American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us by Steven Emerson
Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores by Michelle (the hottest woman on the planet) Malkin
Vince Flynn's "Term Limits" as a solution to our political problems.
Taken Into Custody by Stephen Baskerville and The War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Sommers

[Scotty3214]

Before listening to Harvard Hacks like Burns or any other "authority" for that matter concerning Middle East issues read "The Professors" by David Horowitz and "Ivory Towers On Sand" by Martin Kramer. Our universities are literally bought and paid for by Islamists pushing their fascist agendas. Doubt me? Read these books.

[cattiej]

these people have been fighting for centuries, they will continue doing so until there is one person left standing and looking around and saying"where did everybody go?"
More wars are caused by religion than any other cause..I feel sorry for the children,,the rest of these stupid adults can just go at it until they have killed each other off..

[tmittelstaed]

This is exactly like Emperor Palpatine took over in Star Wars. Life imitating Art, eh?

[OnTheRoad01]

The best bet for the people of Egypt might just be a complete Miltary government!

[antoniof123]

I been saying that for some time now.

They can't seem to find an answer they are led by religious factions and they will kill themselves.

I see the Military taking back control if this guy doesn't lighten up.

[sandiegopete]

The elephant in the room is the Egyptian military. So far, they are not seen in this most recent conflict. Egypt seems to be more diverse in its religious population than other North African and mideastern countries. I am not sure the current radical Islamists' power move will work out for them as well as they hope.

[nonpolitico]

Seems the religious folks in N Africa ignore the will of the people eh?
I wonder where they got THAT idea from??
I mean, they DID have an Arab Spring! They DID overthrow a Dictator!
And they DO get given a lotta US Cash which could be better spent in USA??
No change in US Foreign Policy eh?