A few thousand rally in first significant protests against Egypt’s new Islamist president

CAIRO — Several thousand Egyptians rallied Friday in the first significant protests against the country’s Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, accusing him and his Muslim Brotherhood group of trying to monopolize power.

The main protest in Cairo, which counted around 3,000 people and converged on the presidential palace from several locations, drew a far smaller turnout than the mass demonstrations that helped topple Morsi’s predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, or the later rallies against the council of generals that took power after Mubarak’s fall.