German Justice Minister Heiko Maas on Thursday condemned a deadly attack on a French satirical magazine as an "attack on freedom of expression, the heart of our democracy." He also warned against equating Islam with terrorism.

"This was an attack against Islam. The vast majority of Muslims in Germany consider it a betrayal of their beliefs and they are saying so loudly and publicly," Maas told a news conference in the German capital, Berlin.

"The mainstream here in Germany has to understand that these were extremists who have nothing to do with Islam," Maas said.

"We will respond to the terrorist threat resolutely, but calmly and with moderation," he added.

'No war of cultures'

Maas also warned against allowing a "war of cultures" to arise. He criticized right-wing groups in Germany for seeking to capitalize on the attack, in which suspected Islamist gunmen killed 12 people in a raid on the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Maas' remarks came after a regional leader of the right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD), Alexander Gauland, said the Paris attack confirmed that the purported "anti-Islamization" movement Pegida, which has held weekly demonstrations in various German cities for the past couple of months, was right in wanting to halt immigration.

Pegida, an acronym standing for "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West," is expected to hold up the Charlie Hebdo attack as an example of the dangers posed by "Islamization" at its next planned rally in the eastern German city of Dresden on Monday.

Germany, which has a population of some 81 million, has an estimated 4 million people of Muslim background, not all of them practicing believers.

tj/pfd (AFP, dpa)