The six-party Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) alliance urged followers to rally outside local mosques after the weekly congregations on the Muslim day of prayer, its senior leader Liaquat Baloch told AFP.

The raids that have led to more than 200 arrests came under international pressure on Pakistan to crack down on militants and to search for a possible mastermind of the London 7 attacks that killed 56 people and wounded 700.

But Muslim leaders have stressed that most Islamic schools teach a moderate version of Islam and condemned the continuing crackdown against religious figures and media outlets said to be preaching hatred.

"We strongly condemn the London bombings, and the rallies have been convened to denounce the July 7 attacks and the subsequent arrests by the military regime, which wants to fulfil its own secular agenda," Baloch said.

"Prayer leaders in their sermons will condemn the bombings in London and the indiscriminate arrests in Pakistan in the garb of (searching for the perpetrators of the) London attacks," he said.

Security officials told AFP they would send officers to mosques on Friday to monitor whether any clerics would call for militant action following the wave of arrests and interrogations.

The MMA in a statement late Wednesday lashed out at President Pervez Musharraf, a general who assumed power in a coup in 1999, for what it said were the arrests of hundreds of students, teachers and journalists.

They also charged that police had mistreated female students in madrasas in Islamabad during raids on Tuesday night.

"The Musharraf regime, which called itself a champion of women rights, is fighting the enemies' war against its own citizens and has now reached to the limits where its hands were disgracing the girl students of religious seminaries by snatching their headscarves," it said.