CAIRO, Egypt – An Egyptian university’s plan to award Prince Charles an honorary doctorate was opposed by some Islamic scholars, who said Monday the heir to the British throne did not deserve the honor.

Al-Azhar University decided to give Charles the award in appreciation of his interest in Islam and his promotion of greater understanding of Islam in the West.

The Cairo university is part of the Al-Azhar complex, the foremost Islamic institution in the Sunni Muslim world.

But several top lecturers at the university say Charles does not merit such a high award.

“All that Prince Charles did is to say that Islam is the most widespread religion in the world, and that is a reality, not a discovery by the prince,” said Abdel Azim el-Mataani, a lecturer in Arabic literature.

“That is not enough for him to receive such a reward from the prestigious Al-Azhar University.”

But a director at the university, Abdel Sabur Shahin, gave his support to the award, saying Prince Charles has adopted “positions close to Islam and Muslims, something no one else of his importance has done.”

Shahin said the honorary doctorate was intended to “encourage him to befriend Muslims in Great Britain and to support Islam against the obstacles it faces in Europe.”

The university plans to bestow the award Tuesday, when the prince will visit the institution and deliver a lecture on the relations between Islam and the West.

The grand sheik of Al-Azhar, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, the top Islamic cleric in Egypt, will attend the ceremony and make a speech.

Charles and his wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, arrived Monday afternoon for a five-day visit, the first leg of a two-week tour that will take them to Saudi Arabia and India.

The British Foreign Office currently warns Britons of a high terrorist threat in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

In an interview aired Monday on Egypt’s Nile TV, the prince called for greater tolerance between religions and rejected the “horrors” of terrorism, recalling his own firsthand experience.

“My heart is incredibly heavy from all the destruction and death that occurs,” Charles said in the interview, which was recorded before he left London.

“I know so well from having experienced the horror of terrorism myself, in losing my beloved great-uncle Lord (Louis) Mountbatten back in 1979 when he was blown up in a terrorist bomb.”

Mountbatten was killed in a bombing by the Irish Republican Army.

“I do have some understanding I think, a little, of what people go through with these horrors,” Charles said.

He said Christianity, Islam and Judaism had much in common, and people “who are reasonable and responsible and feel things in the heart” should speak out about the importance of understanding each other.

“It’s tolerance, it’s understanding of what other people hold sacred, which I think is so vital,” he told Nile TV.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told reporters Sunday he hoped the royal visit “would contribute to easing tension between the West and the Islamic World.”

The prince’s office in Clarence House, London, has said the tour aims to improve Britain’s profile and promote interfaith tolerance and the prince’s environmental initiatives.

Charles will inaugurate the British University in Cairo, visit the western desert oasis of Siwa and lay a wreath at the Commonwealth cemetery at El Alamein, the site of a 1942 battle that was a turning point in World War II, before continuing his tour.