A top Islamic official today said Thursday Muslims around the world saw caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed as a direct attack on their values and called the decision to print them in European newspapers a “hate programme”.

Mohamed Ahmed Sherif, chairman of the World Islamic Call Society, said the cartoons, which first appeared in a Danish newspaper last September and have since been reprinted in other papers, fuelled extremism.

“Nobody should blame the Muslims if they are unhappy about the images of the Prophet Mohammed,” Sherif said after meeting EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini in Brussels.

“It’s forbidden to create a hate programme to show that the Prophet is a terrorist while he’s not. Don’t ask us to try to make people understand that this is not a campaign of hate.”

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