By Tom Heneghan

PARIS, Sep 29 (Reuters) A French teacher hiding from Islamist death threats said today he had been abandoned by the Education Ministry and had to arrange his own safe houses when police bodyguards moved him every two days.

Robert Redeker, who went underground after publishing a virulent attack on Islam on September 19, criticised Education Minister Gilles de Robien for saying he should have been prudent in the way he expressed himself.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said the threats against Redeker, who teaches philosophy in a suburban Toulouse high school, were intolerable and showed that ''we live in a dangerous world that is often marked by intolerance''.

The threats came amid widespread criticism of Pope Benedict by Muslims who accused him of implying in a recent speech that Islam was violent. They coincided with the cancellation of a Mozart opera in Berlin out of fear of Muslim protests.

Speaking from an undisclosed location, Redeker, 52, told French radio he felt alone and abandoned. ''The Education Ministry has not deigned to contact me to ask if I need any help,'' he said.

He also felt ''abandoned by the teachers unions, which generally congratulate you when you criticise the Catholic Church but are much more reticent about criticism of Islam.'' Redeker said that asking critical questions was his job as a philosophy teacher. ''If Mr de Robien were right,'' he said, ''there would never have been any intellectual life in France.'' He said he had no regrets about the article, which appeared in the newspaper Le Figaro, and urged what he called ''reasonable French Muslims'' to support him.

Dalil Boubakeur, head of the French Muslim Council, denounced the death threats and said: ''Nobody can take the law into his own hands.'' SAFETY ASSURED, LODGINGS NOT In his article, Redeker called the Koran ''a book of incredible violence'' and Islam's Prophet Mohammad ''a merciless warlord, a looter, a butcher of Jews and a polygamist.'' Islam, he said, ''exalts violence and hate.'' He also defended Pope Benedict from Muslim critics outraged by a speech he gave on September 12 which they said implied that Islam was violent and irrational and had been spread by the sword. The Pope said his speech had been misunderstood.

Redeker said his wife was living in hiding with him under protection by police and the DST domestic intelligence agency.

One son had been forced to move house, another was at boarding school and his daughter was ''staying very discreet.'' ''My security is assured but the logistics are not,'' he added. ''I have to find myself a place to sleep at night or live for a day or two.'' He said the latest death threat against him and his family arrived on Thursday and said: ''You will never again be safe on this earth. One billion 300 million Muslims are ready to kill you.'' In a separate interview, Redeker told Le Figaro the threats included ''a map showing how to get to my home, with pictures of me and where I work and my telephone numbers.'' He said he could not imagine coming out of hiding and resuming his teaching job any time soon. ''I will have to move homes and live somewhere else, where I will now be forced to remain anonymous in my own country,'' he said.

''The Islamists have succeeded in punishing me on French territory, as if I were guilty of a crime of opinion.'' REUTERS PR HT1740