Jakarta: An Indonesian film seeking to shatter religious stereotypes and show the compassionate face of Islam has become one of the biggest blockbuster hits in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

More than than three million people, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and top government officials, have flocked to cinemas to watch Ayat Ayat Cinta (Verses of Love), an Islamic romance released in the middle of January.

The movie deals with a host of sensitive issues such as Islam's treatment of women and multiple marriages through the story of Fahri Abdullah Shiddiq, an Indonesian graduate student at Egypt's Al-Azhar University, and his struggle to deal with life's problems through Islamic teachings.

Film-maker Hanung Bramantyo, 33, who has won two Citra awards, Indonesia's equivalent of the Oscars, says his mission is to present Islam as a tolerant and peaceful religion.

"I wanted to tell a story about Islam from a universal point of view," Bramantyo told Reuters at his modest office tucked in a narrow South Jakarta street.

Bramantyo, who has eight silver-screen films under his belts, says he plans is to make an extended version of Ayat Ayat Cinta for the international market.

"Muslims don't just talk about heaven and hell, or about life in the hereafter, but they can also talk about love, about falling in love at the first sight," he said.

Yudhoyono, who watched the film at an upmarket cinema with his family and 80 foreign ambassadors and diplomats, felt the film was inspiring.

"I had to wipe my tears several times. It drives home the message," Yudhoyono said.

Yudhoyono's spokesman called the film an antithesis to a video accusing the Koran of inciting volence, made by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders and released on the Internet last week.

Wilders' film Fitna (an Arabic term sometimes translated as strife) intersperses images of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and Islamist bombings with quotations from the Koran, Islam's holy book.

Ayat Ayat Cinta, based on a best-selling novel by Indonesian novelist Habiburrahman El Shirazy, is a break from the usual crop of horror and teen films in Indonesia, where the film industry has seen a massive resurgence in recent years.