HOLY CITY OF QOM, Iran: Religious seminaries across Iran shut to stage protests over Pope Benedict XVI remarks that linked Islam to violence as top clerics vehemently criticized the pontiff's words.

According to state television on Sunday all of Iran's seminary schools were closed in protest.

Up to 400 seminarians sat in the auditorium of the Feyzieh -- the main seminary school in the holy city of Qom, south of Tehran -- to protest against the pope's remarks last week in his native Germany.

They carried portraits of founder of Islamic republic of Iran Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini and supreme leader Ali Khamenei emblazoned with the slogans "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" written in Arabic.

"The pope must present his apologies and read the Koran more since it acknowledges Christianity," top cleric Ahmad Khatami, one of the leaders of Friday prayers in Tehran, told the protesting students.

Ayatullah Saafi Gholpaygani, according to state television, said: "Instead of preaching peaceful coexistence among the great divine religions, the pope is planting seeds of division."

The state-run IRNA agency said the order for the schools to shut had come from Qom's Ayaat.