• 'Leave, leave': Egyptians gather in Cairo's Tahrir Square to protest president's decree

    A protester runs to throw a tear gas canister back to riot police during clashes in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Tuesday. President Mohammed Morsi's declaration last week of new powers for himself has sparked days of demonstrations.

    The Associated Press writes

    CAIRO — Egyptian protesters and police clashed in Cairo on Tuesday just hours ahead of a planned massive rally by opponents of the country's Islamist president demanding he rescind decrees that granted him near-absolute powers.

    Police fired tear gas and hundreds of protesters pelted them with rocks at a street between the U.S. Embassy and Tahrir Square, birthplace of the uprising that toppled president Hosni Mubarak's authoritarian regime nearly two years ago.


    The protesters have been staging a sit-in at the square since Friday night to demand President Mohammed Morsi revoke his decrees.

     

    By midday, hundreds were starting to gather in Tahrir, chanting against Morsi's decrees and the Brotherhood. A new banner in the square proclaimed, "The Brotherhood stole the country."

    "We are here to bring down the constitutional declaration issued by Morsi," said one protester at Tahrir, Mahmoud Youssef.

    Egypt's Morsi, top judges compromise to defuse soaring tensions over decree

    Hundreds of lawyers meanwhile gathered outside their union building in downtown Cairo ahead of their march to Tahrir. "Leave, leave," they chanted, addressing Morsi.

    The rally planned for later Tuesday, with marches from various parts of Cairo to converge on Tahrir, is to be a significant test of the opposition's ability to bring out supporters and the public against Morsi's edicts issued last week.

    The opposition says the decrees give Morsi near dictatorial powers by neutralizing the judiciary at a time when he already holds executive and legislative powers. Key parts of the judicial system have denounced the measures.

    After encountering a wave of protests in response to a decree from Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi that would have raised his edicts above judicial review, Morsi moved quickly to contain the damage. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.

    Morsi, in office since June, says the decrees are necessary to protect the "revolution" and the nation's transition to democratic rule. His declaration made all his decisions immune to judicial review and banned the courts from dissolving the upper house of parliament and an assembly writing the new constitution, both of which are dominated by Islamists. The decree also gave Morsi sweeping authority to stop any "threats" to the revolution.

    Morsi's supporters canceled a massive rally they had planned for Tuesday, citing the need to "defuse tension" after a series of clashes between the two camps since the decrees were issued Thursday.

    But a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, the fundamentalist group from which Morsi hails, said demonstrations supporting the president could go ahead outside the capital and that supporters would form human chains in some provinces to protect Brotherhood offices. Morsi's supporters say more than a dozen of their offices have been ransacked or set ablaze since Friday.

    President within his rights?
    On Monday, Morsi met with the nation's top judges and tried to win their acceptance of his decrees. But the move was dismissed by many in the opposition and the judiciary as providing no real concessions.

    Riot police use tear gas on protesters during clashes in Tahrir Square on Tuesday.

    Presidential spokeman Yasser Ali, said Morsi told the judges that he acted within his rights as the nation's sole source of legislation, assuring them that the decrees were temporary and did not in any way infringe on the judiciary. He underlined repeatedly that the president had no plans to change or amend his decrees.

    According to a presidential statement late Monday, Morsi told the judges that his decree meant that any decisions he makes on "issues of sovereignty" are immune from judicial review.

    The vaguely worded statement did not define those issues, but they were widely interpreted to cover declaration of war, imposition of martial law, breaking diplomatic relations with a foreign nation or dismissing a Cabinet. Morsi's original edict, however, explicitly gives immunity to all his decisions and there was no sign it had been changed.

    Photoblog: Protesters in Tahrir Square hold funeral for activist killed in clashes

    The statement Monday did not touch the immunity that Morsi gave the constitutional assembly or the upper chamber of parliament, known as the Shura Council. It also did not affect the edict that the president can take any measures he sees as necessary to stop threats to the revolution, stability or public institutions. Many see that edict as granting Morsi unlimited emergency powers.

    The Shura Council does not have lawmaking authorities but, in the absence of the more powerful lower chamber, the People's Assembly, it is the only popularly elected, national body where the Brotherhood and other Islamists have a majority. The People's Assembly was dissolved by a court ruling in June.

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  • Analysis: 'Manufactured outrage' behind Middle East protests

    Slideshow: Anger over film spreads throughout Muslim world

    Akhtar Soomro / Reuters

    Protests ignited by a controversial film that ridicules Islam's Prophet Muhammad spread throughout Muslim world.

    Launch slideshow

    Jim Maceda, NBC News writes

    News analysis

    Updated at 7:53 a.m. ET: CAIRO — It's been just over a week since hundreds, perhaps a thousand, angry and offended Egyptians gathered outside the U.S. Embassy's gates in Cairo. They carried Islamist banners and chanted, "The only God is God and Muhammad is his Prophet."

    At one point perhaps two dozen of the more brazen protesters scaled the wall and breached the embassy grounds. They lowered and destroyed the U.S. flag and raised a black, Islamic flag in its place. They fled when security guards (not the Egyptian police) fired warning shots over their heads.

    This amounted to little violence, but the act itself was the psychological equivalent of taking a beachhead. Within hours reports emerged that a similarly sized group had stormed the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Some were calling it a copycat protest, but it was much more perilous: Four Americans were killed in the melee, including the U.S. ambassador.

    Within 48 hours the world would witness angry protests unfolding at U.S. embassies, businesses and symbols of power in more than 20 countries.

    Protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and pulled down the American flag during a protest over what they said was a film produced in the United States that insulted the Prophet Muhammad. NBC's Richard Engel reports.

    This paroxysm of protest — and violence — had begun in Cairo. But what, really, began there?

    Much of the mainstream media has played it as a spontaneous reaction to a disgusting film clip which denigrated Muslims and happened to be made and promoted in the USA.

    But New York Times editorialist Ross Douthat argued it had nothing to do with a "genuine popular backlash," but everything to do with old-style power politics. For Jim Clifton, chairman of the pollster Gallup, it wasn't about religion or politics, but rather the desperate expression of young Arab males, deeply humiliated because they couldn't find jobs.

    'Political manipulation'
    Egyptian analysts seem to be more in agreement: Many protesters outside the U.S. Embassy were genuinely offended by the film. But the real driving force behind the protest — in Cairo and Benghazi — were radical Islamist groups who know how to exploit rage for political gain.

    Actors and the assistant director of the film "Innocence of Muslims" told NBC News that the original spoken lines in the screenplay were dubbed over without their knowledge. NBC's Mike Taibbi reports.

    "There are still a lot of questions that need to be answered," said Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian journalist. "For instance, why after two months of being on YouTube did this film suddenly explode on the anniversary of 9/11? That is political manipulation and manufactured outrage that the right wing is all too happy to use.''

    Egypt issues arrest warrants for Terry Jones, Coptic Christians over anti-Islam video

    By "right-wing" Eltahawy means ultra conservatives – often called Salafists – who practice a strict, puritanical form of Islam and make up the fastest-growing Islamic political and social movement in the world. On the night of the Cairo embassy attacks, the Salafists saw an opportunity to flex their muscles.

    "A lot of people went to the U.S. Embassy not just because of the film, and after the film died down, it wasn't about the film anymore," Eltahawy explained. "They went because of anti-U.S. sentiment, because they know in this region how easy it is to fan the flames of anger."

    French officials are preparing for a potential violent backlash as a satirical magazine defends its decision to publish cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad. NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports.

    Dr. Gamal Abdel Gawad, a highly respected Egyptian political analyst, agrees.

    "I don't think it was spontaneous," he told NBC News. "People were gathering in one place at a certain time of day, so there was some mobilization behind it.''

    Actress sues, says she was fooled into appearing in anti-Muslim movie

    And it's clear to Gawad who did the mobilizing. "Radical Salafist groups orchestrated it to express their views and embarrass the [more moderate] Muslim Brotherhood because of competition between Islamic groups."

    Post Arab-Spring power play
    What's enfolding in Egypt – and to a large extent in Libya — is not just a series of isolated power plays. In both countries the leaders who emerged from the Arab Spring are struggling to eke out a political center in order to govern their new democracies, while under extreme pressure from more radical Islamist — sometimes jihadist — forces. Everything is still at stake.

    This has led some Egyptians — like Eltahawy — to worry that their 18-month-old revolution will be hijacked by the extremists.
    "I'm hoping that this right-wing drive of the past days is the dying pangs of a group that understands that the revolution was started by us, the majority, and we remain very much the majority."

    Crowds of angry protesters showed up in Kabul, Afghanistan and Jakarta, Indonesia. The violent uprising followed a deadly weekend marking the deaths of eight International Security Assistance Force members. NBC's Atia Abawi reports.

    Gawad is more sanguine about the future. "The revolution is over. The president is in power, and Egyptian political parties are busy preparing for elections and campaigns. The radical groups can't get significant numbers elected," he said. Still, as dramatic scenes over the past week have shown, those groups — often armed — can wreak havoc.


    Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi seemed to give ground to the Salafists, even leaving the country at the height of a standoff between stone-throwing protesters and riot police for diplomatic meetings abroad.

    Finally, last Saturday, he gave the order to clear out the protesters and appeared on TV calling on Muslims to protect foreign citizens and property. Some called it a turning point.

    Now that a Paris-based satirical magazine has published cartoons of a naked Prophet Muhammad, will Egyptians respond with silent indignation, peaceful marches or be the first to storm their French Embassy?

    Jim Maceda is an NBC News foreign correspondent based in London and currently on assignment in Cairo. He has covered the Middle East since the 1970s.

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  • NBC's Jim Maceda answers questions about the Mideast protests

    American missions across the Arab world tightened security on Friday in anticipation of more anti-U.S. demonstrations on the Muslim day of prayer.

    Tensions flared with attacks  on U.S. embassies in Sudan and Tunisia, protests in Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan, and even the torching of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Lebanon. 

    Jim Maceda, veteran NBC News' Foreign Correspondent, has been reporting from Cairo on the protests triggered by an anti-Islam film for the last several days.

    Is the wave of protests about more than the amateur, yet provocative, anti-Islam film? What’s really behind the anger? Maceda answered reader questions about the demonstrations earlier today. 

    Replay the informative chat below.