An outspoken Dutch film-maker was shot and stabbed to death yesterday by a Dutch-Moroccan man in apparent reprisal for his campaign against Islam, sending shock waves through a country that exalts freedom of speech.

Theo van Gogh, 47, a provocateur and enfant terrible of Dutch cinema, was ambushed by a bearded man in Arab clothing as he cycled through the heart of Amsterdam.

Van Gogh (great-great-grand-nephew of Vincent) had directed a film portraying the repression of women in Islam, and was openly condemned for it in Holland.

In footage intended to infuriate Muslims, he depicted a voluptuous girl in a transparent gown with verses of the Koran painted across her naked chest, back, stomach and thighs - ostensibly to dramatise the humanity of the oppressed female beneath the Muslim veil.

It followed van Gogh's book, Allah Knows Better, in which he savaged Dutch imams for advocating wife-beating and voicing vicious homophobia at mosques in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and The Hague.

You might remember a couple of years ago, the right-wing, anti-immigration politician, Pim Fortuyn, was murdered in a similar fashion.

Both had made a career of ridiculing political correctness and taunting Islam. Fortuyn's death - the country's first political assassination in over 400 years - was viewed by most Dutch as an aberration.

I guess it's not so unusual in "tolerant" countries after all.