Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood says believers must protect Christian houses of worship.

CAIRO -An Al Qaeda threat to Egypt’s Coptic Christians has met with growing condemnation from leading Muslim figures and the press in Egypt, which said it was an attack on national unity.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s biggest opposition group, said Muslims must protect Christian houses of worship after an Al Qaeda group in Iraq threatened to target Copts and other Christians.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is stressing to all, and primarily Muslims, that the protection of holy places of all monotheistic religions is the mission of the majority of Muslims,” the group said in a statement on Tuesday.

The Islamic State of Iraq, which claimed Sunday’s deadly hostage-taking in a Baghdad church, said in an audiotape that all Christians were “legitimate targets” after a deadline expired for Egypt’s Coptic Church to release two priests’ wives the message said had converted to Islam.

The head of Egypt’s Al-Azhar, the oldest Islamic seat of learning, said on Tuesday that such threats served only to “undermine national unity.”

“This is something to be rejected and strongly denounced, and it serves none but those who want to spark discord and target national unity,” said the imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayeb.

He condemned the “heinous” hostage-taking, which left dozens of Christians dead after security forces stormed the church.

The threat was also denounced in the Egyptian press, which had in recent weeks devoted space to disputes between Muslims and Copts over rumoured conversions and a bishop’s controversial comments on the Koran.

“The latest threats from Al Qaeda to the Copts in Egypt are actually a threat against all Egyptians” and “a pretext to destroy our national unity,” wrote a columnist in the government’s flagship Al-Ahram newspaper.

The leader of the Wafd liberal opposition party, Sayed Badawi, wrote in his party’s newspaper: “We are all Egyptians and cannot accept a threat against anything that represents our national identity.”

The government condemned Sunday’s attack on the church and said it would not be drawn in by the Al Qaeda threat.

The Egyptian press reported on Wednesday that police were quietly tightening security around Coptic places of worship. Copts make up between five and 10 percent of Egypt’s 80-million population.

On Wednesday night, the head of the Coptic church said the Al Qaeda threat had inadvertently turned to “good” by creating sympathy for his church.

Speaking amid tight security at St Mark’s Cathedral in Cairo, Pope Shenouda III said: “God either prevents evil or turns it to good.”

“Affirming that everything turns to good, the message that reached us brought sympathy for us from the Noble Al-Azhar and from many writers and journalists and the interior ministry and police,” he said, referring to the metal detectors worshippers had to pass through.

The two women mentioned in the threat, Camilia Shehata and Wafa Constantine, are the wives of priests whom Islamists have said were forcibly detained by the Coptic Church after they had willingly converted to Islam.