A far-right Dutch MP released a provocative film about the Koran on a British website last night, a move that is likely to provoke violent repercussions from angry Muslims around the world.

The 15-minute “documentary” juxtaposing images of Islam’s holy book with the 9/11 terror attacks and other bombings was posted on the internet by Geert Wilders, leader of the small right-wing Freedom Party, after weeks of heated debate in the Netherlands about the project.

Mr Wilders, 44, who has built his political career campaigning against the alleged “Islamisation” of the West, argued that the film was a legitimate exercise in freedom of expression; however, many mainstream politicians and Muslims said that it was gratuitously insulting.

Speaking just before the release of Fitna, an Arabic word meaning strife, Mr Wilders said that he understood that Muslims could be upset about the film but added: “It remains widely within the framework of the law . . . My film was not made to provoke violence.”

Viewers had only a few minutes to see it on the Freedom Party website before it disappeared because of “technical difficulties”. It then became available in Dutch and English on LiveLeak, a British-based video-sharing website, sparking fears that extremists could also target British interests.

The company that runs the website defended its decision to host the film last night, saying that there was no legal reason to censor it. “LiveLeak.com has a strict stance on remaining unbiased and allowing freedom of speech so far as the law and our rules allow,” it said. “There was no legal reason to refuse Geert Wilders the right to post his film and it is not our place to censor people based on an emotive response.” The website said that it did not endorse Mr Wilders or his views.

The British Government did not comment.

Even before seeing the film, demonstrators took to the streets in several countries, including Afghanistan and Indonesia, to vent their fury at the Netherlands, and the governments of Pakistan and Iran have criticised the project.

Mr Wilders seemed to have rushed putting the film out after an American server withdrew and a Muslim organisation said that it would seek a court injunction today.

The Dutch Government condemned the film, and Maxime Verhagen, the Foreign Minister, called it irresponsible given the reaction to the publication in Denmark of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked rioting in a dozen countries, leading to about 50 deaths. In 2004 Theo Van Gogh, the director of an earlier Dutch film critical of Islam, was stabbed by an Islamist.

“The film equates Islam with violence. We reject that interpretation,” Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch Prime Minister, said last night.

Brahim Bourzik,a spokesman for a Dutch Moroccan group, said that mosques would open their doors today to defuse the tension. “It is not a film, it is propaganda,” Mr Bourzik said. “There is nothing new in it.”

The film opened with a Koran being opened and the text of a sura (a verse from the Koran) which it translated from Arabic as imploring the faithful to “terrorise the enemies of Allah”. It was followed by images of aircraft flying into the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11, 2001, with extracts from phone calls to the emergency services on that day.

Further images of bloodstained bodies in the aftermath of the Madrid train bombings in March 2004, in which 191 people were killed, followed.

It showed statistics of the growing Muslim population and images of female genital mutilation, a hanging of suspected gay men, beheadings and bloodied children, all following the words: “The Netherlands in future?”

The film ended with someone leafing through the Koran, and a tearing sound. “The sound you heard was from a page [being torn out] of the phone book. It is not up to me, but up to the Muslims themselves to tear the spiteful verses from the Koran,” a text on the screen said. “Stop Islamisation. Defend our freedom,” the film concluded.

The final image was a reproduction of the incendiary Danish cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb as a turban.

The fuse coming from the bomb was lit and as the screen turned black there was the sound of thunder.

Mr Wilders already lives under police protection after death threats for his strident attacks on Islam.