On Sunday the Egyptian military made an ultimatum that President Morsi and his opponents--mostly liberal pro-democracy and old regime types--had 48 hours to agree on a way forward or the army would intervene. Here is a link to a video from PBS Newshour on that development. This follows on a massive rally held in Tahrir Square in Cairo held by anti-Islamist protesters who want to claw back some of the power that President Morsi has taken for himself.
Developments in Egypt parallel developments in Iran in 1979 in some respects. Then there was a broad revolutionary spectrum composed of Marxists, nationalists, liberals, and Islamists that all banded together to overthrow the monarchist regime. Once the Shah left the country and power was given to the revolution the coalition began to collapse. For the first year moderate nationalists ruled and the force behind the Islamists, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his followers in the clergy, moved to radicalize the revolution and provoke a confrontation with the West by seizing control of the American Embassy in Tehran. The Islamists drew their support from the rural poor who had been migrating to Tehran and living in poor neighborhoods during the Shah's reign. Khomeini promised them sharia, dignity, and economic improvement. The Islamists benefited from a clandestine network that they had used and built over 15 years of opposition to the Shah. Moderates were purged from the revolutionary committees (komitehs) and the government found itself controlling less and less, as in the days of the Russian Revolution. The komitehs were the equivalent of the Russian soviets or soldiers' and workers' councils.
