Thousands join anti-Islam march as Merkel criticised for welcoming refugees

About 20,000 people took part in an anti-Islamic march this week in Dresden, Germany.

Riot police watch over Pegida protesters in Malmo, during the anti-Muslim group's first demonstration in SwedenReuters

The march was organised by PEGIDA, a German right-wing group, and protested at Chancellor Angela Merkel's plans to allow hundreds of thousands of refugees to settle in Germany, Die Welt reports.

The parades of "Patriotic Europeans against the Islamification of the West" (PEGIDA) are organised once a week in Dresden but have been growing in number as anti-Islam feeling grows in Germany.

Another march this week in Leipzig resulted in violent clashes between the anti-Islam Legida group and counter-demonstrators and police forces.

Merkel's warm welcome to refugees won her plaudits from many international figures but has been criticised more locally among her European neighbours.

The Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, has said Germany's generous welfare system encourages many more migrants to come.

Europe's migrant crisis was "a German problem," he said.

Additionally she is beginning to face a backlash from within her own party as several MPs question the practicalities of an open-door immigration policy.

"It's time for uncomfortable truths. There cannot just be feel-good language," said Klaus Peter Willsch, an MP from Merkel's Christian Democrat Union.

Even the German president Joachim Gauck, who usually remains out of politics, had a cautious tone in his speech at the weekend.

"We want to help, we have big hearts. But our capability is limited," he said.

Germany is set to accept between 800,000 and one million refugees this year alone after Merkel temporarily suspended the Dublin Regulation which states that an asylum application must be considered in the member state where the asylum seeker arrived.