Recent rallies in Pakistan have been peaceful, but others erupting in Islamic nations have involved violence. A large crowd in Lebanon on Sunday set fire to a building housing the Danish diplomatic mission in Beirut.

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Tasnim Aslam, told reporters that her government sympathized with the protesters’ outrage.

“This is an issue on which there can be no overreaction,” Aslam said at a weekly news conference.

But she quickly qualified her remark, saying, “Of course we are not in favour of people resorting to violence, but the entire Muslim world is very dismayed and disappointed and we all condemn it.”

The cartoons were first published by a Danish newspaper in September, and other European papers have printed similar caricatures in recent days either to illustrate the story or show support for freedom of the press. One of the cartoons shows Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb.

Muslims have been outraged because Islamic tradition bars any depiction of the prophet.

The Danish paper, the Jyllands-Posten, said the cartoons were not intended to offend and the publication apologized to Muslims.

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman on Monday criticized the paper.

“Either they are very insensitive or they are very ignorant, they didn’t know what kind of reaction it would provoke,” she said.

Also on Monday, more than two-dozen journalists protested against the cartoons in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, demanding a boycott of products from European countries where newspapers have published the sketches.

“Publication of such cartoons cannot be justified as freedom of expression,” said journalist Mohammed Nawaz Raza.