THOUSANDS of women have staged a protest in Muslim-majority Pakistan against an anti-Quran film made by a Dutch lawmaker.

The film, titled ''Fitna,'' sets verses of the Muslim holy book against a background of violent images from terror attacks. Muslim communities have widely condemned Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilder since he released the short film online last month.

More than 4,000 women from the radical Jamaat-e-Islami party and secular groups attended Saturday's rally in Karachi. Some of them beat an effigy of Wilder before setting it on fire.

The protesters, many of them veiled, also condemned the reprinting of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark, and demanded that Pakistan expel the Dutch and Danish ambassadors.