Multan, Pakistan - Pakistan's madrassas have urged the government to withdraw its ambassador from Denmark over cartoons portraying the Prophet Mohammed.
Joining the outcry in the Muslim world over the drawings published in a Danish newspaper and now in other European dailies, a group representing around 12,000 of the Islamic religious schools demanded an apology.
"We demand the Pakistani government withdraw its ambassador from Denmark for allowing blasphemous cartoons of the Holy Prophet Mohammed," Qari Hanif Jallundhari, a senior leader of the Ittehad Tanzeemat Madaris (madrassas union), said in a statement.
Jallundhari said Saudi Arabia had recalled its ambassador from Copenhagen while Libya had closed its embassy there, and Pakistan should also take action over the publication in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten in September.
"These blasphemous caricatures have hurt millions of Muslims in the world. We demand a clear and public apology from the Danish government for the crime which had hurt Muslims," he said.
If Denmark failed to act "we would be forced to call for a boycott of Danish products like other Muslim states," the federation leader said.
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, while apologising if Muslims were offended, has refused to apologise for their publication, saying that would constitute meddling in press freedom.
Copenhagen altered its travel advisory for Pakistan in November after it said an official from the leading Jamaat-e-Islami religious party announced a reward for the deaths of the cartoonists.
The party denied putting up the reported 500,000-rupee (8,333-dollar) bounty.
Pakistan's madrassas teach tens of thousands of children a strict Islamic curriculum but the schools have also been accused of being breeding grounds for extremism.
Pakistan ordered some 1,400 foreign students studying in madrassas to leave the country after it emerged that at least two of the July 7 London bombers may have visited one of them before the attacks.