Behold, the King of Kings

Protesters run from the riot police during clashes at Tahrir square in Cairo November 25, 2012. REUTERS photo 

It takes just one ill-timed and ill-considered move precisely when someone is feeling his oats, self-congratulating himself for his masterful handling of a crisis situation with exterior ramifications that might prove hazardous for the entire Middle East, to convince that person that with his newfound prestige he would be immune to criticism in producing an edict whose effect would de-legitimize his claims of parliamentary democracy.

It was the audacity of the action that took many by surprise.  That Mohammed Morsi would feel that secure after the plaudits he received from the international community, the respect he had garnered for Egyptian diplomatic efforts, the elevated status with which Egypt is now considered on the world stage, even while its economy collapses and its interior security is in shreds, that he would dare consolidate his power base to such an unwarranted extent.

The comparison between his newly-dictated authority and powers and that of the autocratic, deposed and ailing former President Hosni Mubarak was irresistible for his critics, and they are many.  For the most part those whose acts of social defiance, daring the old guard military and the feared police to deny them the right to protest in Tahrir Square, resenting the slick come-from-behind victory of the Muslim Brotherhood now have a solid accusation base.

"If the Brotherhood's slogan is 'Islam is the solution', ours is 'submission is not the solution'.  God does not call for submission to another man's will", insisted Sara Khalili, a mass communications professor at the American University in Cairo.  She has stated the broad opinion of the tens of thousands of protesters massing in Tahrir Square to challenge their new president.

"Leave, leave", they've been chanting.  "Morsi is Mubarak ... Revolution everywhere".  This time it isn't the dispossessed, the unemployed, the students and the liberal-left secularists so much as the upper-class liberal elite who have massed in the streets.  "We are in a state of revolution  He is crazy if he thinks he can go back to one-man rule."

In Alexandria and elsewhere, protesters have torched headquarters buildings of the Muslim Brotherhood, they have waited outside mosques for Muslim Brotherhood members to emerge, to confront them with bellicose chants and threats of violence.  One fifteen-year-old boy has died in the chaos of anger and rebellion, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

It is clear enough that the Muslim Brotherhood which initially acted with circumspection is now boldly anxious to consolidate its hold on power.  The threat by the judiciary, still representing the Mubarak era, in attempting to overturn the Islamist-dominated assembly writing the next constitution offends them greatly.  They want no repeat of the dissolution of the assembly and lower house of parliament.

And they most definitely do want a re-trial of the elite members of the Mubarak cabinet, and Hosni Mubarak himself, calling for 'justice' to be done, in memory of his having outlawed their Islamist movement, in memory of long jail sentences for their senior elite, in memory of humiliation and the long wait to achieve the power now held in the palm of their hands.