The head of Egypt's Information Service has blamed Tom and Jerry for the rise of ISIS - claiming the characters encourage extremism and teach children that you can blow people up.

Ambassador Salah Abdel Sadek said the cartoon as well as video games and 'violent' movies helped to spark violence and extremism across the Arab world.

He told an audience at Cairo University that Tom and Jerry contributed to the notion that violence was a 'natural' part of life.

The head of Egypt's Information Service has blamed Tom and Jerry for the rise of ISIS - claiming the characters encourage extremism and teach children that you can blow people up

Ambassador Salah Abdel Sadek said the cartoon as well as video games and 'violent' movies helped to spark violence and extremism across the Arab world

According to Egyptian Streets, he said: '[The cartoon] portrays the violence in a funny manner and sends the message that, yes, I can hit him…and I can blow him up with explosives. It becomes set in [the viewers’] mind that this is natural.'

He added that it has become common place for young men to spend hours playing violent video games and that the gamer will be 'happy and content'.

The website said that the Egyptian government had not yet taken steps to censor Tom and Jerry or video games - despite Salah Abdel Sadek's comments.

The cartoon was created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and centred on a feuding cat called Tom and Jerry a mouse.

Hanna and Barbera wrote, produced and directed 114 Tom and Jerry shorts between 1940 and 1957 and the original series won seven Academy Awards.

Ambassador Salah Abdel Sadek (pictured) told an audience at Cairo University that Tom and Jerry contributed to the notion that violence was a 'natural' part of life

But it has been embroiled in controversy both in the US and the UK in the past.

in 2013 it was reported that fans of the classic cartoon were furious after two episodes deemed 'inappropriate' because they feature the cat and mouse 'blacked-up' were removed from a new collection.

Warner Brothers' Golden Collection Volume Two was intended to be an uncut series of the popular animation in chronological order.