Legal documents to form the Freedom and Justice Party were submitted by the Muslim Brotherhood to the political parties committee on Wednesday.

According to the papers, the party’s members include 978 women and 93 Coptic Christians. Coptic intellectual Rafiq Habib has been selected as the party’s vice president, a move no doubt intended to assure nervous Christians that they have nothing to fear if the party comes to power.

Its secretary general, Mohamed Saad el-Katatni: “The party is open to all Egyptians, Muslims and Copts alike.”

Egypt’s Christians have traditionally suffered persecution and discrimination for their faith. On New Year’s Day, more than 20 people died when a church was bombed in Alexandria.

This month, two churches were set on fire by Muslims during clashes in Cairo that left 12 people dead.

Many Christians are afraid that the Muslim Brotherhood and the smaller Muslim groupings it has aligned itself with, will seek to establish a strict Islamic state far more repressive than Mubarak’s regime was.

Coptic human rights activist Wagih Yacoub said in a report by International Christian Concern: “There is no doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis are allied. The Brotherhood plays politics and the Salafis are causing chaos so they can empty Egypt of Christians and make it an Islamic state.

“Lots of Egyptian people, including moderate Muslims, are worried. If Egypt becomes an Islamic state, it may mean civil war.

“We won’t get protection from the military council or the police forces. Our homes will be attacked at any minute, any time.

“Lots of people are scared. How will we protect ourselves? There will be bloodshed.”

In the UK, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali said the violence in Cairo demonstrated that there was a “worrying extremist radical Islamist element” running through the unrest in the Arab and Islamic world at this time.

“This will affect not only Christians but secular and moderately-minded Muslims as well – and may affect the future political shape of the Middle East,” he said.

“Since the revolution, all credible observers say the attacks on Christians have increased markedly at the hands of Wahhabi-Salafi groups.

“Their agenda is an Islamic state built on their extreme beliefs. The West is also vulnerable to this kind of extremism.”