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The Association of Czech Muslim Communities denounced on Monday caricatures of Prophet Mohammad which recently appeared in Prague and Brno. Leaders of the Czech Muslim community Vladimír Sáňka and Muníb Hasan said the authors of the caricatures abused freedom of speech and wanted to incite civic intolerance; Mr Sáňka and Mr Hasan also called on Czech Muslims to keep “behaving in the Islamic way” and protecting public order in the Czech Republic.

A controversial documentary by Dutch far-right MP Geert Wilders, which this year sparked protests across the Muslim world, has been screened for the first time in the Czech Republic. Monday’s screening of the film Fitna in Brno was organized, perhaps surprisingly, by the Czech Muslim community, which is mainly centred in the Moravian capital.

In the past couple of weeks two incidents have threatened to disturb the peaceful coexistence between Czechs and the country’s Muslim community, centred mainly in the Moravian city of Brno. First, the city was plastered overnight with posters depicting the controversial Danish caricature of the prophet Mohammed which sparked violent protests across the Muslim world. And then last week the ultra-right National Party placed the controversial anti-Qur’an film Fitna by the rightwing Dutch MP Geert Wilders on its web page.

Czech Muslems have condemned the foiled terrorist attacks in Great Britain saying that violence against innocent people was deplorable under any circumstances and expressed their support for the war against terrorism. Vladimir Sanka, a leading representative of the Czech Muslim community, expressed concern about a possible backlash against all people of the Muslem faith. "Those who seek to harm innocent people are enemies of us all - Muslims and non-Muslims," Sanka said.

Less than a century ago, Europe's Muslim population was concentrated primarily in the Balkans. Nowadays, there are Muslims living all over the continent from Iceland to Georgia. In keeping with this trend, the Czech Republic also has a small but robust Muslim community. There are currently around 20,000 practising Muslims living in this country.

Czech efforts to get the EU to take a united stand in condemning Islamic violence in the wake of the controversy over caricatures of the prophet Mohammed have failed to bear fruit - only increasing tension between the Czech Republic and Arab states. Moreover, a number of Arab countries have protested against a documentary on the life of Moslems featured on Czech television, which they say shows Moslems as dangerous radicals.

The Prague embassies of a number of Arab countries have protested about a documentary on the life of Muslims in the Czech Republic shown on state broadcaster Czech Television, Hospodarske noviny reported. The film features material shot on a hidden camera and accompanies testimony by Muslims with footage of terrorist attacks. The Czech Broadcasting Council is assessing whether the documentary was in breach of broadcasting regulations.

The Czech Muslim community has distanced itself from the violent protests taking place around the world against the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in western newspapers. The protests were among the topics discussed on Monday by Interior Minister Frantisek Bublan and representatives of Muslim organisations in the Czech Republic. The Czech Muslim community amounts to a few thousand, several hundred of those being Czech converts.

The Iranian embassy in Prague has demanded an apology from two Czech newspapers. A few days ago, to illustrate articles on the debate, they both reprinted one of the fourteen Danish cartoons that sparked off protest in much of the Muslim world. The papers insist they have nothing to apologise for.

Britain's EU commissioner for trade, Peter Mandelson, came to Prague on Tuesday to hold a speech at an international business conference. Before the event, Mr Mandelson met members of the Czech government to discuss - above all - economic issues.