CRITICS have labeled it a Reichstag fire moment, a reference to when Hitler consolidated power in Germany. Admirers describe it as a brave and necessary, albeit temporary, move to prevent a drift towards chaos. In either case Muhammad Morsi, Egypt's recently elected president, has pitched his country into a crisis as dire as any since the uprising in January 2011 that ended six decades of military-backed dictatorship. Seeking to break a deadlock with secular opponents, he issued a shock decree on November 22nd granting himself sweeping new powers. The move has left Egypt starkly and dangerously polarised. Whether Mr Morsi succeeds, and whether this turns out well or disastrously for Egypt, remains to be seen. Mr Morsi has had a rough ride since his wafer-thin election victory last June. The president's Freedom and Justice Party, a snazzier-clothed clone of the dowdy Muslim Brotherhood to which he owes his real allegiance, had pumped his candidacy with promises of sweeping improvements to government services during his first hundred days. This was to be followed by the launch of a so-called Renaissance Project, touted as a grand design formulated by Brotherhood experts to yank Egypt into prosperity. Yet it took the gruff, folksy Mr Morsi six weeks just to name a cabinet, which has since been widely dismissed as lame, bland and ineffective. Not only has there been no discernible uplift to living standards. Mr Morsi's brief administration has been plagued by reminders of creaking government such as power cuts, worse-than-ever traffic jams, accumulating piles of rubbish, and public sector strikes including one by doctors protesting appalling hospital conditions. A hideous accident at a level crossing last week, when a speeding train ploughed into a bus illegally overstuffed with more than 60 schoolboys on their way to a weekend Koran-reading lesson, proved a sickening reminder of just what a shoddy state Egypt is in. Mr Morsi enjoyed a moment of glory in August when he abruptly dismissed the powerful generals, appointed under the fallen regime of Hosni Mubarak, who had commanded the unsteady transition leading to his own election. The purge seemed to augur a real and long-delayed switch to full civilian rule. Yet it soon transpired that the exiting generals had left by agreement, following a rumoured commitment by Mr Morsi not to trespass too deeply into such "sovereign" matters as internal security, intelligence, defence or foreign policy. Egypt's president seems to have stuck to his word, avoiding criticism of the police, who remain deeply tainted by a culture of torture, corruption and impunity, while assiduously attending every possible military pageant or parade.

But Mr Morsi has clashed repeatedly with another part of Egypt's "deep state"—the judiciary and public prosecution service. It was Egypt's high courts, still packed with Mubarak-era appointees, that infuriated the Brotherhood in June by ruling to disband the post-revolutionary parliament, three quarters of whose seats had been won by Islamists only six months earlier. Having last spring dissolved one constituent assembly, a body chosen by the parliament and tasked with drafting a new constitution, but which secularists said the Brothers had packed with Islamists, the courts have again been threatening to dissolve a second, also heavily Islamist assembly. This was meant to complete its draft constitution in December, but the resignation en masse of the third of its members who happen not to be Muslim Brothers or fellow-travellers has called its legitimacy into question.

In October Mr Morsi faced humiliation when the country's judges closed ranks to block him from firing Egypt's public prosecutor. Yet another Mubarak appointee, the powerful attorney-general had dismayed many Egyptians by mysteriously failing to secure any serious convictions for the killings, by Mr Mubarak's police, of more than 800 people during Egypt's 2011 revolution, and of dozens more in post-revolutionary violence. Still, antipathy to the Brotherhood runs so deep that even hardened revolutionaries leapt to his defence against the president. Forced to reinstate the prosecutor, Mr Morsi looked weak and ill-advised.

In what appeared to be another poorly-judged move, Mr Morsi passed up an opportunity last week to soothe relations with Egypt's large Coptic Christian minority. Battered for a decade by nasty sectarian attacks, and understandably nervous at seeing Islamists increasingly empowered, Egyptian Christians were puzzled and disappointed by the president's failure to accept an invitation to attend the crowning of the new Coptic pope, Tawadros II. His apparent disdain for minority feelings added to a growing sense that despite posing as an impartial leader, Mr Morsi instinctively embodies the Brotherhood's attitude that it is they, and their version of Islam, that represents the "true" Egypt.

Given his troubles at home, Egyptians were generally pleased to find Mr Morsi win international kudos for helping to mediate a ceasefire on November 21st to end recent fighting in Gaza. Palestinian, Israeli and American officials united in a chorus of praise for the pragmatism and earnestness of Egypt's new president. Mr Morsi's performance as an arbiter of last resort—a role often played by Mr Mubarak—suggested that even such profound skeptics of the Muslim Brotherhood as Israelis and Americans could now feel that Egypt is again in a safe pair of hands. His stature rose, too, with an announcement from the IMF that it had given the go-ahead for a $4.8 billion loan for Egypt that could unlock an even bigger flow of desperately needed aid.

But scarcely had the ink dried on the Gaza ceasefire before Egypt's president found himself again under attack. Perhaps emboldened by foreign praise, confident of army backing, concerned for the investment climate and frustrated by Egypt's poisoned and polarised politics, Mr Morsi on Thursday made bold use of the right he holds, in the absence of a legislature, to issue decisions that carry the validity of laws. He had promised to restrain this right to minor matters, but instead announced a seven-point decree that grants him, in effect, temporary executive power over Egypt's courts. Intended to resolve several interlocked issues at a stroke, the move has instead thrown the country into turmoil, uniting the Brotherhood's disparate opponents in rage and raising serious doubts even for many of Mr Morsi's admirers.

Some parts of the presidential declaration provoked only muted complaint. Extending the mandate of the current constituent assembly by two months made sense, although many would have preferred Mr Morsi to broaden its membership instead. Responding to popular demands for more convincing revolutionary justice, Mr Morsi promulgated a new law for that purpose. Appointing a new public prosecutor who is untainted by association with the former regime, the president tasked him with launching re-trials of Mr Mubarak and his henchmen. Disturbingly, however, Mr Morsi helped enforce the outgoing prosecutor's exit by summoning Brotherhood members to surround his office in central Cairo.

More disturbing still, for many Egyptians, were the other parts of Mr Morsi's decree. These have stripped courts of any right to dissolve or challenge the current constituent assembly, and assert the immunity of all presidential decrees from challenge by any other authority, until such time as a new constitution is passed. Perhaps most troubling of all was this final, catch-all clause: "The President may take the necessary actions and measures to protect the country and the goals of the revolution."

Brotherhood supporters quickly asserted that these vastly expanded presidential powers would only be temporary. Mr Morsi himself made a conciliatory speech, declaring himself proud to govern a country with a strong and vocal opposition. His moves were necessary, he said, to uphold the goals of the 2011 revolution, complete its democratic transition, and to get its economy back on track. Vowing to cleanse state institutions of "worms" that have eaten away at them, Mr Morsi swore that he would never impinge on the freedoms he had spent his own life fighting for.

A large and vocal chunk of the Egyptian public is not buying any of this. As huge crowds gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday to protest, mobs in several provincial cities attacked and ransacked Muslim Brotherhood offices. "If we stay silent now we are just slaves to the sultan," tweeted Alaa al Aswani, Egypt's best-selling novelist. Some critics dubbed the president Morsillini, while others evoked a dark chapter in Egypt's own modern history, when Gamal Abdel Nasser, the leader of the 1952 coup that toppled King Farouk, dismantled a flourishing democracy with a similar series of "necessary" decrees, all in the name of order and progress.

Leaders of the squabbling and fragmented formal opposition have united for the first time since the revolution, condemning Mr Morsi’s move as a power grab by the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt’s Western allies, including America, have also voiced alarm. Several of the president’s own advisers have quit in protest, and his minister of justice has moved to distance himself from the decrees. With judges across the country already declaring strikes, the possibility of a complete freeze to Egypt’s judicial system looms. Mr Morsi’s spokesmen say he is determined not to back down, and doing so would certainly damage his presidency badly. But given the prevailing and profound lack of trust between all of Egypt’s political players, it is hard to see how he can push ahead.

Ominously, the Muslim Brotherhood and its opponents have each called for massive demonstrations in Egypt's capital on November 27th. Violent clashes between police and anti-government protesters, and between Brotherhood supporters and their enemies, have already broken out across the country. For millions of Egyptians who cheered the overthrow of Mr Mubarak, this seems a particularly perverse outcome. The former regime's corrupt and cruel deep state remains broadly despised. Sympathy for Mr Morsi's desire to subdue it is widespread. But Egypt's president seems to have foolishly overstepped his authority and greatly overestimated his appeal.

Picture credit: AFP