One Saturday afternoon seven years ago, Bradford City fan Keith Wildman was crossing Centenary Square to buy a copy of the T&A.

The worst riot on Britain’s mainland later erupted on that evening of July 7, 2001. At its height up to 1,000 or more people battled several hundred police officers.

Although not directly connected, the al Qaida attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, and the London suicide bombings of July 7, 2005, were to follow; events which greatly changed perceptions, Government policy, led to the war in Iraq, and are now the subject of moviemakers.

Fundamentalists with a political interest in maintaining tension between Muslims and non-Muslims in this country claim that the former were and still are victims of Islamophobia and hostile policing.

As proof they point to the killing by police of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes on the London Underground on July 22 – the day after four Muslim men had been prevented from carrying out more bombings in the capital.

This ongoing conflict between the threat of terrorism and society’s preventative counter-measures is the subject of a new movie called Shoot On Sight, starring Brian Cox, Sadie Frost, Greta Scacchi, Ralph Ineson, Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri.

The plot mirrors real events. In the film a Muslim is killed by police in London in the wake of 7/7. A successful senior Muslim police officer, Tariq Ali, is asked to head the subsequent internal investigation, which becomes clouded with allegations of racism and religious profiling in the police.

Ali finds himself challenged from within the police and from without by other Muslims. He becomes torn between his family and his sense of professional duty. He soon realises that sometimes the right decision is the hardest one to take.

The man handling the publicity for the film is none other than Keith Wildman, the man crossing Centenary Square on July 7, 2001, and saw the aftermath of the disturbances in Bradford.

He said that Shoot On Sight was the first cinema release to tackle the issue of suicide bombings on UK soil and the country’s ongoing threat from home-grown terrorists linked to fundamentalist Islam.

The film’s producer, Los Angeles-based industrialist Aron Govil, who also runs Aron Govil Productions Inc, an international film finance, production and distribution company, put nearly £4m into the film to make sure that it got made.

He said: “The entire project has been funded by me and distributed independently as I strongly felt it was a topic that needed to be addressed. The film raises important questions about the climate of fear post-7/7 and the direct impact of that terrible day.

“It does raise some uncomfortable racial issues, but once UK audiences see the film they will, I hope, see that it portrays a balanced point of view.”

The movie’s director is Jagmohan Mundhra. He said he got the idea for the story, which was written for the screen by Carl Austin.

“I was doing post-production of a film in London in 2005. I used to go to Leicester Square to watch the film and at night grab a taxi home. For two to three weeks after 7/7, taxis wouldn’t stop for me because I had a beard and was Asian although I am not a Muslim.

“I just wanted to show how the actions of a few and how circumstances out of control totally disrupt our lives. I took real-life incidents and dramatised them. Jean Charles de Menezes was shot by mistake, but the shooter had a split-second decision to make. What if the man had turned out to be a bomber? So you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

“Now we have a situation of life imitating art where Tarique Ghaffur (Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner) is suing Sir Ian Blair (the commissioner) for not promoting him. In my film a Muslim police commander, played by Naseeruddin Shah, is relieved of duty when things get messy.

“I am very proud that my film has a very balanced point of view. It is a political thriller, very fast-paced. We have a clash of ideologies where people take these issues according to what suits them. Manipulating issues of faith – everybody does that. A devout Muslim with a beard is not necessarily a fundamentalist.

“The film is not painting any one particular community to be bad or wrong. It’s left to the audience to choose.

“As a film-maker my sympathy lies with those who are moderate and integrated and those who are not fundamentalists.”

Shoot On Sight will be screened at Cineworld and the Odeon, Thornbury, later this month.