Remember Torcant Torcant’s guest post on Sevan Nişanyan? Later he sent me a link to an interview with Nişanyan.

2. Prosecutors have accused you of “overstepping the boundaries of freedom of speech and criticism.” What is your response to this accusation?

The quality of legal education in Turkey is abysmal. Evidently this young prosecutor was under the illusion that saying something mildly distasteful to the prevailing religious opinion is beyond the boundaries of free speech. [Read more…]

Fighting dirty, in other words.

“I am now being branded by personnel around the country as being a murderer – that I am going to have on my soul the death of 20 million babies,” he told the Dáil.

“I am getting medals, scapulars, plastic foetuses, letters written in blood, telephone calls all over the systems and it’s not confined to me.”

What about the dead women? Don’t they count?

You know how people who claim the death of Savita Halappanavar was just a sad accident also like to claim that Ireland has a very low maternal death rate? I always wonder, when I see that, if Ireland massages the numbers. Well guess what.

Savita recorded as only maternal death despite five further fatalities

THE death of Savita Halappanavar is the only maternal death recorded by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) last year – although at least five more fatalities were reported by maternity units.

Hmm. The dog ate their homework? The check is in the mail? They had a spot of amnesia?

It has already been reported by the Coombe Maternity Hospital in Dublin that two women died there last year, including a mother of twins.

There were three maternal deaths in Cork University Hospital last year, including two women who died in pregnancy and after giving birth. A new report last year indicated for the first time that some deaths are being missed and the rate of maternal death in Ireland is double the official figure.

And given what we know about why Savita Halappanavar died, it seems likely the figure is even higher than that.

So Ireland needs to change its abortion laws. They’re working on it. And they’re getting harassed by the anti-abortion crowd as a result.

The Taoiseach responded to concerns over the legislation, published overnight, after an Independent TD warned about a pro-life mob ambushing politicians in a widespread campaign of intimidation.

John Halligan, from Waterford, claimed he was confronted by a gang of seven campaigners on the promenade in Tramore in May and told to change his views on abortion, or they would be changed for him. [Read more…]

A report on the death of Savita Halappanavar was published on Thursday.

The report, described by Minister for Health James Reilly as a “hard-hitting report which spares nobody and doesn’t pull any punches”, identifies three main factors which led to Ms Halappanavar’s death.

They include:

– A failure to adhere to clinical guidelines for prompt and effective management of sepsis when it was diagnosed

– Not offering all management options to the patient as she experienced inevitable miscarriage, even though the risk she faced increased from the time her membranes ruptured [Read more…]

From Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s first novel, Amrita, published in 1955.

Amrita, a young woman, goes with her boyfriend and a friend of his to a café. It’s crowded, and they’re seated at a table in the middle of the room.

Amrita felt very much embarrassed. She did not dare to look up, for she knew she was being scrutinized from all sides; as was every woman tolerably young and pretty. Hari did not notice the offensive stares that afflicted her; he had been born into a society unused to disguising its interest for the sake of  politeness, and considered staring at young women a perfectly natural reflex action. He did it himself without the slightest reticence.

“Reticence” is the wrong word, but never mind – you know what she means. [Read more…]

There were sculptures of horses on a roundabout (a traffic circle) in Abu Arish in Saudi Arabia. That sounds pretty and decorative and pleasant. But then along came a Grand Mufti to say it was sinful.

 Grand Mufti Abdulaziz al-Shaikh sent a letter to the governor of Jazan demanding that “the sculptures be removed because they are a great sin and are prohibited under sharia (Islamic law),” said another news webitse, sabq.org.

Statues of people and animals are prohibited under Islam as they represent a form of idolatry. However, the religion does allow artworks depicting plants and landscapes.

That’s nice of it. It’s so kind and generous of it to allow some things. But if you want more than plants and landscapes – well that’s too god damn bad.

The sculptures were smashed by the municipality.

photo by Larry Jacobsen

Update: the photo isn’t of the sculptures in question, I should add. This one is in a town in Montana, and it is (I assume) intact and there for everyone’s innocent enjoyment. I just wanted a creative commons picture of a sculpture, so I browsed. There’s a lot of kitsch but also a lot of nice stuff like this one.

In the UK, a report by MPs says FGM is being ignored.

They warn that 20,000 girls in the UK are at risk of being subjected to the highly painful procedure, and 66,000 women are living with its after-effects, and yet not a single prosecution has been brought since it was outlawed. [Read more…]

Speaking of “blasphemy,” Jane Donnelly and Michael Nugent have been working on the Atheist Ireland submission to the Constitutional Convention on blasphemy, with David Nash from Oxford Brookes University.

We will be meeting the secretary of the Convention tomorrow for feedback on how best to formalise the submission, and we will then finish the final report.

The Irish blasphemy law has two components – Article 40.6.1 of the Constitution, which makes blasphemy an offence that is punishable in accordance with law, and Section 36 of the Defamation Act 2009, which defines the offence and makes it punishable. [Read more…]

An Egyptian writer and human rights activist, Karem Saber, has been sentenced to five years in prison for writing a book of stories titled Where is God?

The complaint against Saber and his book Ayn Allah (Where Is God?) was initially filed in 2011, months after the fall of former president Hosni Mubarak’s regime. Saber’s was reportedly the first blasphemy case of its kind after Egypt’s revolution. [Read more…]