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CAIRO — With a constitutional assembly on the brink of collapse and protesters battling the police in the streets over the slow pace of change, President Mohamed Morsi issued a decree on Thursday granting himself broad powers above any court as the guardian of Egypt’s revolution, and used his new authority to order the retrial of Hosni Mubarak. Mr. Morsi, an Islamist and Egypt’s first elected president, portrayed his decree as an attempt to fulfill popular demands for justice and protect the transition to a constitutional democracy. But the unexpected breadth of the powers he seized raised immediate fears that...

The top leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood denounced peace efforts with Israel and urged holy war to liberate Palestinian territories on Thursday—one day after the country's president, who hails from the movement, mediated a cease-fire between Israelis and Palestinians to end eight days of fierce fighting. “The enemy knows nothing but the language of force,” said Mohammed Badie. “Be aware of the game of grand deception with which they depict peace accords,” he said in a statement carried on the group’s website and emailed to reporters. His statement was a sharp deviation from the role played by President Mohammed Morsi...

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is calling for a jihad (“holy war”) to liberate the Palestinian Authority areas. "Jihad is obligatory” for Muslims, top Islamic cleric Mohammed Badei said, adding that peace deals with Israel are a “game of grand deception". .....

CAIRO — Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Morsi assumed sweeping powers on Thursday, drawing criticism that he is seeking to become a "new pharaoh" and raising questions about the gains of last year's uprising which ousted Hosni Mubarak. The move is a blow to the pro-democracy movement that toppled the long-time president, himself derided by many as a pharaoh, and raises concerns that Islamists will be further ensconced in power. Opposition forces denounced the declaration as a "coup" and called for nationwide protests on Friday. "The president can issue any decision or measure to protect the revolution," according to a decree...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama skipped dessert at a long summit meeting dinner in Cambodia on Monday to rush back to his hotel suite. It was after 11:30 p.m., and his mind was on rockets in Gaza rather than Asian diplomacy. He picked up the telephone to call the Egyptian leader who is the new wild card in his Middle East calculations. Over the course of the next 25 minutes, he and President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt hashed through ways to end the latest eruption of violence, a conversation that would lead Mr. Obama to send Secretary of State Hillary Rodham...

The trajectory of conflicts like these are fairly clear. Israel bombs some terrorist targets and then launches a ground incursion into Gaza to suppress terrorist activities. But the Obama Administration is already working against a ground offensive behind the scenes, as a New York Times report mentions. Obama supposedly called Netanyahu to discuss options for “de-escalating” the situation, but all those options are going to involve signing on to another meaningless cease fire while Hamas continues carrying out attacks, on and off. Netanyahu has made calling off a ground operation contingent on an end to rocket attacks. Which Obama isn’t...

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi made several decrees Thursday that will shape the country’s constitution and, he says, safeguard its “revolutionary” future. They include a ruling that none of his decisions can be overturned by any authority. Morsi gave the Constituent Assembly a two month deadline to finish drafting a new constitution, ruling that no authority may dissolve it until the country's defining document is completed. He further ruled that no authority may dissolve the Shura Council, the upper house of Egypt's parliament. In a move likely to bring criticism that the Egyptian president is inappropriately expanding his powers, he also...

Egypt's President Mohammed Mursi has issued a declaration banning challenges to his decrees, laws and decisions. The declaration also says no court can dissolve the constituent assembly, which is drawing up a new constitution. President Mursi also sacked the chief prosecutor and ordered the re-trial of people accused of attacking protesters when ex-President Mubarak held office. Egyptian opposition leader Mohammed ElBaradei accused Mr Mursi of acting like a "new pharaoh". Mr ElBaradei said the new declaration effectively placed the president above the law. "Morsi today usurped all state powers and appointed himself Egypt's new pharaoh. A major blow to the...

CAIRO (Reuters) - Thousands of Islamists rallied in Cairo on Friday to demand immediate introduction of sharia and called on President Mohamed Mursi to resist opposition to Islamic law. Islamists, Liberals and non-Islamists have locked horns over what civic freedoms women, Christians and minority groups will enjoy under a new constitution being drafted by an Islamist-dominated panel. The constitution is supposed to become the cornerstone of democratic transition after the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak last year. Without it, the country cannot hold elections to replace a parliament that a court declared void in June. The Islamist camp is divided....

WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — Islamists in the Middle East are speaking out following President Barack Obama’s re-election Tuesday night. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood feels that the only foreign policy change Obama can bring is by “accepting the will of the Arab people.” “We must rely on ourselves and on our resources and build our country,” Issam Al-Aryan, a top Muslim Brotherhood official, said, according to The Times of Israel. “In the absence of direct American influence, Egypt can affect and lead the process of building a democratic and constitutional regime that will become a dream for African and the southern hemisphere.”...

‘Destroy The Idols,’ Egyptian Jihadist Calls For Removal Of Sphinx, Pyramids Monday, 12 November 2012By AL ARABIYA Murgan Salem al-Gohary, an Islamist leader twice-sentenced under former President Hosni Mubarak for advocating violence, called on Muslims to remove such “idols.” (Courtesy: Dream TV) An Egyptian jihad leader, with self-professed links to the Taliban, called for the “destruction of the Sphinx and the Giza Pyramids in Egypt,” drawing ties between the Egyptian relics and Buddha statues, local media reported this week. Murgan Salem al-Gohary, an Islamist leader twice-sentenced under former President Hosni Mubarak for advocating violence, called on Muslims to remove such...

Paul Berman, the New York intellectual, is perhaps the most penetrating and imaginative essayist writing about Islamist movements and ideas alive today. In 2010 he published The Flight of the Intellectuals, a stylish account of the Muslim Brotherhood: the Islamist political movement founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna (known in Arabic as al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen). According to Berman, the party was shaped decisively in both its ideology and organisational methods by mid-century European totalitarianism and was a politically hardened, ideologically-driven and anti-Semitic movement. It was from this inconvenient truth that much of the western media and many public intellectuals...

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which monitors anti-Semitic incidents worldwide, has made a strong condemnation of Egypt’s new President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, after he attended a sermon where the preacher called for the “destruction and dispersal of the Jews.” A video emailed by the center showed Morsi at a mosque in the Mediterranean town of Marsa Matruh, where the congregation answers “Amen” to a cleric who recites a list of prayers in a traditional ritual. In one of the prayers, the cleric asked God to “destroy the Jews and their supporters and disperse them, rend them asunder.” Morsi...

Perhaps the most radical change in U.S. foreign policy under President Obama has occurred here in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood, long shunned as a collection of dangerous Islamist extremists, is now the de facto object of American support. Not only that: Ultraconservative Salafist politicians, who make the Brotherhood seem like moderate pragmatists, are now regular visitors to the U.S. Embassy and, on the theory that it is better to have them inside the tent than out, they are able to visit the United States to learn how things work in the land of Jeffersonian democracy. Of course, the new...

The translators at MEMRI – the Middle East Media Research Institute – have posted a new video showing Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi attending Friday prayers at a mosque in the Matrouh governorate in northern Egypt. During the religious service, the Muslim cleric Futouh Abd Al-Nabi Mansour gave a sermon that included a prayer to destroy or deal harshly with the Jews, and to grant victory over the “infidels.” In the clip, it appears that Morsi is mouthing the word “Amen” after each of the cleric’s pronouncements. During his Friday sermon, Mansour, who heads the region’s Islamic Endowment, said: [...] Oh...

Wednesday, 05 September 2012 11:50 Obama Prepares Huge Bailout for Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt Written by  Alex Newman font size Print The Obama administration is close to finalizing a massive $1-billion bailout for the increasingly totalitarian Muslim Brotherhood regime ruling over Egypt, according to U.S. government officials cited in news reports. The move is already drawing fierce criticism from opponents arguing that bailing out the new Islamist ruler, who is already working to bolster Egyptian ties with the communist Chinese dictatorship while becoming increasingly despotic at home, would be a mistake on multiple levels.   In addition to forgiving the...

A letter from the desk of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi is sparking controversy in Egypt leaving people in disbelief that the Muslim Brotherhood leader had actually referred to the Israeli president as a "great friend." Yet skeptical Egyptians who have called the letter a "Zionist fabrication" have now been silenced, as a spokesman for Morsi confirmed on Thursday the authenticity of the letter, which was given to Shimon Peres by Atef Salem, Egypt's ambassador to Israel, on Wednesday at an official ceremony in the president's residence. The contents of the letter, which were leaked to the press, caused an uproar...

Egypt’s Brotherhood top officials face investigation over attacks on women protesters Joseph Mayton | 15 October 2012 Protests in Egypt turned violent on Friday near Tahrir Square. CAIRO: Two top Muslim Brotherhood officials are being investigated by Egypt’s Attorney General Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud over their role in allegedly inciting President Mohamed Morsi supporters to attack female protesters around Tahrir Square last Friday. Mohamed el-Beltagy and Essam el-Erian are under investigation, Mahmoud said. Mahmoud himself had only the day before defied an order to step down from his position after President Morsi attempted to push him out after a court acquitted former...

Two Coptic Christian children, aged 10 and 9, have been arrested for insulting religion in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Beni Suef, Ahram Online reported on Wednesday. According to the report, the two children were arrested on Tuesday after the imam of their local mosque filed a complaint against them. By order of the prosecution the two boys, Nabil Nagy Rizk and Mina Nady Farag, are now being held in the Beni Suef juvenile detention pending further investigation on Sunday, said the report. Ibrahim Mohamed Ali, the village imam, has accused the children of tearing up pages of the Koran....

Visit any Coptic church in the United States and you immediately recognize the newcomers. You see it in their eyes, hear it in their broken English, sense it in how they cling to the church in search of the familiar. They have come here escaping a place they used to call home, where their ancestors had lived for centuries. Waves of Copts have come here from Egypt before, to escape Gamal Abdel Nasser's nationalizations or the growing Islamist tide. Their country's transformation wasn't sudden, but every year brought more public Islamization. As the veil spread, Coptic women felt increasingly different,...