Berlin - A controversy over whether the club anthem of a German football club insulted the Prophet Mohammed appeared to have been defused Wednesday, by the one of the country's largest Muslim associations.

The controversy blew up on Tuesday when it emerged that Schalke 04, a Bundesliga side, had received a flurry of emails protesting against a line in its club song that mentioned Mohammed, the founder of Islam.

The line goes something like "Mohammed was a prophet / who understood nothing about football / but from all the blaze of colour / he picked the blue and white," - the team's home strip.

However on Wednesday, Aiman Mazyek, General Secretary of the Central Muslim Council said that "We should take the whole thing with humour. There is really no blasphemy or mockery in the song," he told the German Press Agency dpa.

According to a Schalke spokesman, the club had received some 350 emails, some threatening, saying that the song was insulting to the religion of Islam.

Some Muslim fans of Schalke, which is a highly popular team from the industrial city of Gelsenkirchen, had threatened to withdraw their club membership in protest.

The song had included a reference to Mohammed since at least the 1960s.

Mazyek linked the reaction to the song to the July 1 murder of a Muslim woman in a courtroom in Dresden by a right-wing extremist.

"After the terrible murder ... the Muslim community is unsettled and afraid," he said.

"Naturally, Mohammed lived long before there was any football. He probably would have laughed about it as well," Mazyek said in a statement on the council's website.

Germany's population includes some 4 million Muslims, most of whom have a Turkish family background. (dpa)