DHAKA, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Bangladesh's biggest Islamic political party called on Saturday for exemplary punishment of those involved in printing cartoon images of Prophet Mohammad which have outraged Muslims around the world.
"Enemies of Islam are out to harm the faithful through a sinister campaign of so-called freedom of speech," Moulana Motiur Rahman Nizami, chief of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, told an estimated 50,000-strong rally in Dhaka.
"They should be taken to task and punished vigorously," he said about the cartoons that appeared in Denmark in September and later in other European newspapers and elsewhere.
Thousands of protesters tried to besiege the Danish embassy in Dhaka on Friday, but were driven off by riot police.
Nizami also called for intensifying a global watch against terrorism, and urged his followers to combat Islamist militants at home.
"Now is time for an all-out vigilance all over the world against spreading terrorism that has been threatening Muslims and their religion," he told the rally at Paltan Ground in the Bangladesh capital.
Nizami also lashed out at Islamist militants blamed for a wave of bomb attacks in Bangladesh that have killed at least 30 people and wounded 150 since August.
The Islamists -- mostly members of two outlawed groups, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen and Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh -- are fighting for the introduction of sharia law in Bangladesh, a mainly Muslim democracy.
Opposition parties led by former prime minister Sheikh Hasina accuse Jamaat-e-Islami of "harbouring and protecting" the Islamist militants.
Jamaat-e-Islami, a partner in Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia's coalition government, says it has no links with the two groups, or any other terror outfits.
Other speakers at the Jamaat rally also spoke against militancy in the name of religion, and urged the authorities to crush them. Hundreds of police guarded the rally. There was no violence.
