CAIRO, Egypt – The country’s Coptic Christian leaders are challenging the Interior Ministry’s line that stabbings in two Alexandria churches on Friday were the act of a deranged man working alone. A statement issued on behalf of Alexandria’s churches this weekend said the attack represented an “organized terrorist plot to target churches ahead of Easter.”

The stabbings on the Friday before Palm Sunday on the Coptic calendar have set off clashes more intense than the country has seen in at least a decade. Yesterday, Egyptian police fired tear gas into crowds of Christian demonstrators throwing stones and brandishing knives in front of the All Saints Church in Alexandria. Christian neighborhoods in the ancient Mediterranean city erupted in violence following the funeral of Nushi Atta Girgis, the 78-year-old man who died in Friday’s knife attack. A mosque in the city has been pelted with stones, and the state’s national riot police have cordoned off some large churches and arrested at least 55 demonstrators.

The upcoming prosecution of the case could agitate Egypt’s minority Christian community, estimated to be approximately 6 million, just as the Rodney King trials bestirred black America in 1992. The perception among many Coptic leaders is that crimes against Christians in Egypt are not prosecuted as seriously as crimes against Muslims, and that the state sanctions discrimination in the public and private sphere. Much is riding on the utterances of the Coptic Pope here, who has so far not publicly commented on Friday’s violence.

The official line yesterday from the government on the attacks was that 25-year-old Mahmoud Salah-Eddin Abdel-Raziq entered three churches on Friday and stabbed worshipers as revenge for the publication last fall in some European newspapers of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. The state-funded newspaper, Al-Ahram yesterday ran a story in which officials in the interior ministry and prosecutor’s office quoted Mr. Abdel-Raziq’s mother as saying her son had succumbed to “black magic.” The newspaper also said that Mr. Abdel-Raziq suffered an epileptic seizure during his first hours of interrogation.

But Coptic leaders are not buying that. “This was not strange to take place in Alexandria because there is a considerable concentration of Islamist movements,” the editor of Egypt’s largest Coptic newspaper, Youssef Sidhom, said yesterday. “The concern is that we feel we are not defended by the security police and the regime as citizens. This feeling grows to the extent to minimize the effect of the violence by saying this is a single act of a crazy guy.” Mr. Sidhom added his paper was keeping its eyes “wide open to see what the district attorney will do.” He added, “We have a rather gray history when people are arrested, but later the state does not present enough evidence.”

The reverend at the mounted Church in Cairo, Marcos Aziz Khalil, told the al-Arabiya television network yesterday that there may be more violence from Christians if grievances were not addressed by the state. “The second article of the constitution should be amended,” he said referring to the clause in Egypt’s charter that stipulates Islam as the official religion and source of all legislation. Mr. Khalil added, “What do you expect from a people that is always charged with the claim that Copts are ‘apostates?’ …The killer is a professional, not a lunatic.”

An official statement from the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s semi-legal Islamist organization that has officially renounced violence, condemned yesterday the violence of Friday’s stabbings and the sectarian violence. In an interview with Mohammed Habib, the organization’s deputy guide, however, he dismissed concerns from Coptic leaders that the attacks of Friday were the work of organized and radical Muslims. “I asked some of the brothers in Alexandria,” he said. “The person the security people captured is known to be mentally disturbed.” When asked how one man could have overpowered three security details in separate churches, Mr. Habib said, “Security individuals can leave for tea.”

But overall, Mr. Habib believes the state discriminates less against Christians and more against Muslims. “There is, for sorrow, a war against Islam, and on being religious in general,” he said. “It is launched by the state through internments, surveillance, pursuit, military courts. There is a misunderstanding for both Muslims and Christians, toward how to deal with sectarian situations.” The brotherhood has launched an occasional dialogue with Coptic leaders and came out against violent demonstrations last November in Alexandria following the staging of a play some more radical Muslim imams deemed offensive to the religion.

But nonetheless, in its official literature, the brotherhood is ambiguous on whether the state should recognize the rights of Coptic Christians, according to a specialist on Muslim-Christian ties at Cairo’s Citizenship Studies Center. “The Muslim Brotherhood up till now did not give a concrete vision about the Christians from a religious point of view,” Samir Marcos said. “In their literature they consider them as second-class citizens or declare they are not fully citizens.” Mr. Markos, who himself is a Coptic Christian, said he considers the events this weekend as a “turning point.” He said, “There is this atmosphere, this feeling that the Coptic middle class and lower class, they still think there is a kind of inequality, especially in their daily lives.”

Mr. Sidhom yesterday said he welcomed the official statement from the Muslim Brotherhood. “In the past decade, I can easily say the Islamic brotherhood do not resort to violence,” he said. “I think the announcement is not fake and they do really mean it.” But Mr. Sidhom was also very wary of some of the more violent Islamist organizations operating in Alexandria, particularly the Al-Jihad Islamic Group. “They have a strong presence in Alexandria, they work from behind many mosques. This is not a secret in the Alexandria streets, where they patrol in trucks with their microphones.” He said their message amounted to the “negation” of all non-Muslims.

Egypt’s ruling party, the National Democratic Party, has organized a march denouncing sectarian strife scheduled for today.