CAIRO — Thousands of Islamist supporters of President Mohamed Morsi gathered in Cairo on Friday afternoon as Egypt’s highest religious authority warned of the possibility of “civil war” after days of escalating tensions and episodes of deadly violence.
The warning from the religious authority, Al Azhar, the seat of Sunni scholarship in Egypt, came on the eve of mass protests organized by a coalition of Mr. Morsi’s opponents, calling on the president to step down. Mr. Morsi’s supporters have called for counterprotests, leading to fears of violent clashes between the two camps.
The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest Islamist party, said that several of its supporters were killed during attacks on its headquarters and on mosques over the last three days. Early Friday, at least one person died in Zagazig, Mr. Morsi’s hometown, according to the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing.
In comments carried by state news media, a senior scholar at Al-Azhar, Hassan el-Shafei, blamed “ignorant people” for some of the attacks and said that the country needed to be alert “in order for us not to be dragged into a civil war that does not differentiate between supporters and opposition.”
On Friday afternoon, a few thousand Islamists gathered outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya Mosque in Cairo, as the imam urged Muslims to choose peace over violence. Nearby, vendors sold plastic hard hats. Men who bought them said they wanted protection from the blistering sun, but also from rocks, in anticipation of clashes with anti-Morsi protesters.
Some carried long plastic tubes as clubs, one brought a golf club and another a wooden rolling pin — all for self-defense, the men said.
The start of the protests came a day after Mr. Morsi moved aggressively to preserve order and confront his opponents, deploying the army near government ministries and the Suez Canal, starting legal proceedings against several judges and purging critics from a state-appointed body that helps regulate the airwaves.
Though many had hoped that Mr. Morsi would move to defuse calls for mass protests against him this weekend, he instead wielded the might of the state to project power. His message to those challenging his authority was to either work through the political structures that have emerged since the country’s revolution in 2011, or have no say in how the state is run.
“One year is enough!” Mr. Morsi said repeatedly in a televised speech on Wednesday night, threatening to purge holdovers from the clique of former President Hosni Mubarak. He also offered no major concessions to those calling for his ouster, dismissing them as antidemocratic.
“This is the message he is sending, a threat pretty much that his tolerance and patience for so-called subversive acts and extra-constitutional activities will no longer stand,” said Yasser el-Shimy, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. “If you would rather work outside the system, we are going to come after you.”
Mr. Morsi’s decision to shrug off the opposition and forge ahead comes at a time when bitter polarization over the direction of the country threatens to unleash a new wave of unrest.
In his speech, Mr. Morsi went after several individuals he said had broken laws and undermined the state. Action against some of them came swiftly, with government figures appointed by Mr. Morsi moving against them within 24 hours. On Thursday, an accountability body inside the justice ministry opened corruption investigations against a number of judges Mr. Morsi had accused of participating in rigging elections. Gehad El-Haddad, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement that propelled Mr. Morsi to power, said in an online commentary that 32 judges were under investigation.
The prosecutor on Thursday also slapped a travel ban on Mohammed Amin, the owner of a satellite TV channel that has often been critical of Mr. Morsi since the president accused him of tax evasion. The prosecutor said Mr. Amin was under investigation on allegations he owes more than $ 60 million in taxes.
“He’s a tax evader — let him pay,” Mr. Morsi said. “He unleashes his channel against us.”
Worries Over Growing Political Violence in Egypt
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