'I have no bad conscience. I only sent the news'

His inflammatory chat show on satellite television has long prided itself on baiting liberals, Christians and Jews, but last week Sheikh Khalid Abdullah staged the broadcasting controversy of a lifetime.

The rabble-rousing Egyptian Islamist knew he had found a ratings-grabber when he found an obscure, badly-made film on the internet called the Innocence of Muslims. It had been online since July, but nobody had paid attention to its crude libels against the Prophet Mohammed until Mr Abdullah's show broadcast clips from it last weekend, calling for the film-makers to be executed.

Within hours the hardline Salafi Islamists who watch his programme, and who have been growing in strength since last year's revolution, were demonstrating in Cairo's Tahrir Square and outside the US embassy, which they stormed on Tuesday, burning the US flag.

Thus began a week of violent protests against the film, leading to the killing of the US ambassador to Libya on Tuesday and assaults on Western embassies throughout the Middle East, leaving at least nine dead and hundreds injured. Also destroyed are hopes that with the Arab Spring, violent, anti-Western feeling was a thing of the past.

"I don't have a bad conscience about it, I did not call for violence," Mr Abdullah told The Sunday Telegraph yesterday (Saturday) at his home in a Cairo suburb. "It's not like I made this film. I only transmitted the news. It is funny that people in the West imagine that showing only two and a half minutes of the film on my channel was responsible for this whole crisis."

Mr Abdullah, 47, whose "New Egypt" talk show started last year, exemplifies the way the Arab Spring movement of the past 18 months has unleashed two diametrically opposed forces within the Muslim world. One is that of the "Facebook Generation" who initially led the protests in the likes of Tahrir Square, who are generally liberal, educated and secular. The other is that of conservative, anti-Western Islamists who were likewise suppressed by dictators such as Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, and who are now exercising their freedom of speech. Despite Salafis officially advocating a disdain for the trappings of modern life, they are well-versed in the power of digital media. And just like the Facebookers, they are adept at getting their supporters onto the streets.

Yesterday, protests continued. In the Australian city of Sydney, police were pelted with rocks and bottles by several hundred protesters carrying placards saying: "Behead all those who insult the Prophet". In Pakistan, crowds burned US flags, and in some 50 countries, US embassies were on high alert.

In Cairo, police arrested some 220 people in an overnight crackdown outside the US embassy, many of whom had pledged to remain until President Mohamed Mursi, an Islamist and Egypt's first freely elected leader, took a firmer line against the Americans. "The clashes will continue until President Mursi takes a strong position," said Ahmed Abdel Gawad, 31.

Pope Benedict XVI, on a visit to Lebanon, pleaded for Muslims and Christians to live in harmony. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama tried to soothe anger at the killing of the US ambassador Chris Stevens by saying that the Libyan mob that stormed the Benghazi consulate on Tuesday were not the same as the crowds who gratefully cheered the West for helping Colonel Gaddafi.

"I know the images on our televisions are disturbing," Mr Obama said in his weekly radio and internet address. "But let us never forget that for every angry mob, there are millions who yearn for the freedom, and dignity, and hope that our flag represents."

As Mr Obama broadcast his address, residents of Benghazi reported hearing US drones flying over the city, raising expectations that Washington may launch military strikes against camps run by Ansar al-Sharia, the Salafi militia widely blamed for the embassy attack. The Libyan authorities arrested a further 12 suspects yesterday, on top of four taken into custody the day before, but the ability of its fledgling post-Gaddafi government to deal with such threats has already been cast into doubt.

Not only did Libyan security forces fail to protect the embassy staff, they are also under criticism for not disarming Ansar al-Sharia, despite it being suspected of other attacks on foreign embassy staff and the desecration of holy shrines and British war cemeteries. Like many Libyan militias that sprung up during the revolution, it still operates openly in Benghazi.

"The new Libyan government has not tried to take their weapons off them because if you do that with one brigade, then all the other brigades fear they will do the same thing," said Shamsiddin Ben Ali, a former member of Libya's transitional national council who knew Mr Stevens. "The Salafists have only minimal support here in Libya, and they could easily be disarmed by any well-trained brigade. They are misguided, with an ideology that is completely alien to Libyans … The sooner they are arrested the better."

Mr Obama thinks likewise. In a Rose Garden statement, he said those responsible would be brought to justice, despite the difficulty of identifying specific perpetrators.

No American president can allow a US ambassor to die in such circumstances without being seen to respond in tough fashion - especially two months before an election.

But that plays into the militants' hands. The warships, the drones, and the despatching of US marines all create the impression of US military interference in Muslim lands. That is something the White House had hoped would be ending with the wind-down of troops from Afghanistan.

Last night, grim details emerged of Mr Stevens's final hours, during which he appears to have become separated from his bodyguards and taken refuge in a secure room in the compound, protected by a locked iron gate and wooden door. What should have been a protective citadel became a death-trap, with Mr Stevens unable to escape the smoke engulfing the room. He was found, asphyxiated, by a group - possibly looters - who broke into the room through a window, the New York Times reported.

US officials are also said to be investigating reports that on the day of the embassy assault, militants from Ansar al-Sharia were in discussions with members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the Saharan franchise of the global terror movement. Until now, it has not really made its presence known in Libya. "The way AQIM has been discussing this strongly suggests they were involved in the plotting," one former US official told the Wall Street Journal.

Mr Abdullah, the Egyptian broadcaster, laid the blame for the violence on Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the California-based Egyptian Coptic Christian who apparently made the film, and who is now under US police protection at his home in Los Angeles. A convicted bank fraudster, Mr Nakoula was driven to a sheriff's station yesterday on suspicion of violating the terms of his parole, wearing a scarf, hat and sunglasses to hide his identity.

Yesterday, the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Somali-based al-Shabaab movement both urged Muslims to carry out attacks on foreign embassies and targets in the West.

More conciliatory was Abdullahi Sheikh Osman, a spiritual leader in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, who came to talk at a demonstration against the film. "The man who made the nasty film is the al-Qaeda of Christians," he said. "If Muslims make havoc, then they are rewarding the crazy man."

Additional reporting by Richard Spencer in Cairo and Ruth Sherlock in Beirut