A French teenager forced to go into hiding for criticising Islam was on Thursday at the heart of a ferocious secularism row after the justice minister claimed her comments breached "freedom of conscience”.

The row initially erupted after a 16-year old schoolgirl called Mila got into a heated exchange on social media that ended in her receiving a torrent of death threats and being taken out of school for her own safety.

An avid singer from Lyon, southeastern France, Mila had engaged in a live “chat” with followers of her Instagram account.

During the exchange, she rebuffed repeated advances by one online suitor, saying she was lesbian, prompting insults about her sexuality.

Then the attacks took a religious bent, with zealots online reportedly accusing Mila of insulting "our God Allah, the one and only" and hoping that she would "burn in hell."

She then posted fresh footage criticising religion in general and Islam in particular. In a clip she said: "I hate religion. The Koran is… full of hate, Islam is sh**, that's what I think. I am not racist, not at all.

"You cannot be racist towards a religion. I said what I thought, you will not make me regret it."

Her remarks unleashed a torrent of abuse as two online camps slugged it out over her right to criticise religion at #JeSuisMila and #JeNeSuisPasMila.

“I received 200 messages of pure hatred per minute,” she said afterwards. Her personal information was divulged online, leading to her receiving police protection.

Her lawyer, Richard Malka, said she was currently receiving homeschooling and that it was proving “difficult to find an establishment today able to guarantee her security”.

French justice minister Nicole Belloubet apologised for "clumsy" remarks in which she appeared to rule out the right to criticise religion credit: BERTRAND GUAY

When the story hit French media, the justice minister condemned the online attacks the girl had received, saying: “In a democracy, death threats are unacceptable.”

But Ms Belloubet also added: “Insulting a religion is obviously a breach of freedom of conscience.”

Her remark was instantly seized upon by political opponents and intellectuals as morally and legally wrong.

Laurence Rossignol, former women’s rights minister and a senator, tweeted: “Zero out of 20 on constitutional rights.”

“In France, it is forbidden to insult followers of a religion but one can insult a religion, its figures, its symbols,” she wrote.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-Right National Rally, likened Mila’s critique of religion to anticlerical caricatures that featured in Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine several of whose cartoonists were gunned down by Islamists in January 2015.

“This young girl’s comments are the oral description of Charlie’s caricatures, no more, no less,” she wrote. “One can find it vulgar but one cannot accept that for this, some people condemn her to death in France in the 21st century.”

Eric Ciotti, MP from the Right-wing Republicans party, accused the government of “legitimising Islamists’ hatred of Mila” and called on President Emmanuel Macron to “break his torpor and his silence” on the issue.

Mr Malka said: "If we no longer have the right to criticise a religion, we're living in a theocracy not a republic, let alone a secular republic."

Even Christophe Castaner, the interior minister, appeared to criticise the remarks, saying: “The crime of blasphemy does not and never will exist under this government.”

Muslim leaders waded in, with Abdallah Zekri, general delegate of the French Council fo the Muslim Faith, CFCM, saying: “As you sow so you shall reap. She asked for it so she should face up to it.” The head of the CFCM, Mohammed Mousaoui, later said his colleague's choice of words was “inappropriate”.

Ms Belloubet sought to defuse the row on Thursday morning, saying that she had been “clumsy” and "shouldn't have said that".

“Insults and discrimination against someone due to their religious belief is a crime. That’s what I meant to say. I absolutely didn’t justify turning blasphemy into a crime," she told AFP, calling the controversy "ridiculous".

The local prosecutor launched two investigations.

The first into whether the girl had sought to “incite hatred towards a group of people due to them belonging to a given race or religion” was swiftly dropped on the grounds she was expressing a “personal opinion”.

The second investigation into death threats is ongoing with police looking into whether any of the anonymous authors came from her school.