Danish TV shows cartoons mocking Prophet Mohammad

COPENHAGEN, Oct 7 (Reuters) Danish state TV aired amateur video footage showing young members of the anti-immigrant Danish Peoples' party engaged in a competition to draw humiliating cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.

The video images have surfaced little more than a year after a Danish paper published cartoons of the Prophet that sparked violent protests worldwide.

The images, filmed by artist Martin Rosengaard Knudsen who posed as a member of the party for several months to document attitudes among young members, show a number of young people drinking, singing and drawing cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Mohammad.

The faces of the young people were blurred in most of the the footage. One cartoon appeared to depict the Prophet Mohammad as a camel, urinating and drinking beer. The competition took place in early August, according to Danish media.

Another cartoon strip aired in the partly masked footage on state TV seemed to show the prophet Mohammad surrounded by beer bottles and included an image of an explosion.

Members of the youth wings of other parties, including the ruling Liberal party, criticised the DPP yesterday. Kenneth Kristensen, a senior member of the DPP's youth movement, also criticised the events, but stopped short of apologising.

''It's not my kind of humour and it would not have happened if I had been there. It must not be repeated,'' he told Danish state TV.

The Danish Peoples' Party rose to prominence in a 2001 election on a platform that combines emphasis on increased spending on schools and care for the elderly with a strong anti-immigrant stance.

It has been accused of racism, but has been a political ally of the centre-right coalition led by Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen since 2001 and gained more than 13 percent of the vote in an election last year.

In September last year Danish daily Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons, including one showing the Prophet Mohammad with a bomb in his turban. They were later reprinted elsewhere. Muslim clerics denounced them as blasphemous, sparking protests in which more than 50 people died in Asia, Africa and the West Asia.

Most Muslims regard any depiction of the Prophet Mohammad as offensive.

REUTERS DKS RAI0435