Posters of Mohamed Morsi can be seen on every other Egyptian street this week, usually with the eyes gouged out and his face covered with a giant cross. But outside the Rabaa al-Adaweya mosque in Nasr City, in east Cairo, pictures of the president remain in rather better shape.
It is here that about 100,000 Morsi supporters have gathered in recent days, a reminder that however many millions have called for his downfall since Sunday he retains a significant core support.
"I'm here to defend my vote and to defend a revolution I was part of," says Shaima Abdel-Hamid, a teacher at the rally. "We chose a president and now they want to get rid of him when he's dealing with 30 years of corruption. And they want to get rid of him after only a year."
For many their backing of Morsi goes beyond support for his democratic legitimacy. The battle for Morsi is also a battle for the concept of political Islam, or the idea that the state should be run according to Islamist principles.
"Myself, I hate Morsi," says Badr Badradin, an advertising agent who feels Morsi hasn't done enough to promote Islamist rule. "But it's not just about Morsi. It's about the future of political Islam. He just happens to be its face right now." Outside the mosque this week Islamists have often pointedly chanted: "Seculars will not rule Egypt again."
In recent days support for Morsi has been confined mainly to the Rabaa al-Adaweya rally. But after the army's ultimatum on Monday and following days of attacks on Islamist offices, pro-Morsi supporters announced rallies in all of Egypt's 27 governorates and ramped up their rhetoric.
"Any coup of any sort will only pass over our dead bodies," said Mohamed el-Beltagy, a senior Brotherhood official, at the rally on Monday night. He called for "families in all Egyptian governorates and villages to be prepared to take to the streets and fill squares" to support their president.
Support for Morsi comes not just from the Brotherhood but from Salafis – ultra-orthodox Muslims who try to mimic the lifestyle they believe the prophet Muhammad once followed – and centrist Islamist parties. The Nour party, a leading Salafi group, is one exception, choosing to support neither Morsi nor his opponents.
In the eyes of many Morsi supporters the 2011 uprising was an Islamic one, and it is now being disrupted by saboteurs loyal to the ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak. "Now we're seeing the revolution being threatened," says Mohamed Sherif Abdeen, an IT teacher and member of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood.
From time to time Abdeen and his colleagues line up in well-formed platoons – wearing an odd hotchpotch of builders' hardhats and motorbike helmets – ready, they say, to defend the presidential palace should it be breached by Morsi's opponents. Some carry sticks and homemade shields emblazoned with the slogan "Legitimacy is a red line", a reference to Morsi's democratic mandate.
"We won't do anything if the army and police do their job," says Abdeen. "But if not, and they don't protect the presidential palace, we will protect it with our chests."
There are fears that Egypt might fall into armed factional conflict. In Qena on Tuesday Islamist groups said they may resort to violence should Morsi be forced from power.
"Many Islamists – not just in the Brotherhood – would be out of control," said Khalil al-Anani, a specialist on Islamism at Durham University, who warned that the fall of Morsi would radicalise scores of young Islamists. "For them, this would be a coup not just against the president but against Islam as they perceive it – and this is one of the problems facing Morsi at the moment. He can't satisfy the opposition if he doesn't step down, nor his social base if he does."
For days, most Morsi supporters kept to a disciplined message of peaceful protest in their conversations with journalists, but some now seem to have snapped. "It's fine," says Mohamed Tariq, a 16-year-old student at a new pro-Morsi rally in west Cairo. "If he goes down, we'll bring down the president they elect. It's either an Islamist state, or we get martyred."
Khaled Fahmy, head of history at the American University in Cairo, played down the prospect of civil war. "There's a possibility of Islamists giving up on democracy," he argued. "But they already tried [violence] during the 1990s. It did not achieve their ends, and they realised this."
In the 1990s hardline Islamist groups such as Gamaa Islamiya carried out a series of terrorist acts across Egypt; they renounced violence more than a decade ago.
Older Islamists at a rally in west Cairo say memories of the brutal state backlash against Islamists during and since the terror campaign make them more wary of a return to secular rule.
"Resorting to violence would be the last option when everything else does not work," says Sheikh Hamida Mohamed, a senior Gamaa Islamiya official who was imprisoned and tortured for nine years under Mubarak. "If we were violent people, we would have already gone after the officers, who we know by name, who burnt our houses and took our wives and daughters. If there was a secular president who allowed religion to prosper, there wouldn't be any need for a return to arms."
But he adds: "The expected thing from the seculars if they reach power is that they will oppress and imprison us. I'd rather die than live in the humiliation of prison. We've been in prison for years and the scenes of humiliation inside are beyond what any human should experience. Islamists will not allow the age of killing and torture to come back."
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