British author Salman Rushdie, whose novel ‘The Satanic Verses’ made him the target of a fatwa by Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, was stabbed on stage Friday during a conference in the west of New York State. The assailant was arrested.
British author Salman Rushdie, author of ‘Satanic Verses’ and target for more than 30 years of a fatwa from Iran, has been placed on a ventilator after being stabbed in the neck and abdomen in the state on Friday of New York by a man who was arrested.
“The news is not good,” the British writer’s agent, Andrew Wylie, told the New York Times on Friday night.
“Salman will probably lose an eye; the nerves in his arm were severed and he was stabbed in the liver,” Mr. Wylie said, adding that Mr. Rushdie, 75, had been placed on life support.
Immediately after his attack, on the stage of an amphitheater of a cultural center in Chautauqua, in upstate New York, Salman Rushdie was transported by helicopter to the nearest hospital where he was operated on urgently, New York State Police Major Eugene Staniszewski told reporters.
Police had announced shortly before 11:00 a.m. (1500 GMT) that a man had “rushed onto the stage (of the amphitheater) and (had) attacked Salman Rushdie and the interviewer” by “stabbing” the writer “in the neck” and also “to the abdomen”.
Conference host Ralph Henry Reese, 73, was “slightly injured in the face”. The attacker was immediately arrested and taken into custody, said Major Staniszewski, revealing that the attacker was Hadi Matar, 24, from the state of New Jersey. On Saturday, the main ultra-conservative Iranian daily, Kayhan, congratulated the aggressor.
“Bravo to this brave and duty-conscious man who attacked the apostate and vicious Salman Rushdie,” the newspaper wrote. “Let us kiss the hand of him who tore the neck of the enemy of God with a knife”.
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Mr. Rushdie was preparing to give a literary conference in this small town located 100 km from Buffalo, near Lake Erie which separates the United States from Canada.
Carl LeVan, professor of political science, was in the room, and told AFP by telephone that a man had thrown himself on the stage where Mr Rushdie was sitting to stab him violently several times, “trying to To kill him”.
Mr. Rushdie, born on June 19, 1947 in Bombay, two months before India’s independence – brought up by a family of non-practicing Muslim intellectuals, wealthy, progressive and cultured – had set part of the Muslim world ablaze with the publication “Satanic Verses”, leading Iranian Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini to issue a “fatwa” in 1989 calling for his assassination.
The author had therefore been forced to live in hiding and under police protection, going from cache to cache.
He then faces an immense loneliness, increased by the break with his wife, the American novelist Marianne Wiggins, to whom “Les verses…” is dedicated.
Living discreetly in New York, Salman Rushdie – arched eyebrows, heavy eyelids, bald head, glasses and beard – had resumed a more or less normal life while continuing to defend, in his books, satire and irreverence.
Knighted in 2007 by the Queen of England
But the “fatwa” was never lifted and many of the translators of his book were injured by attacks, even killed, such as the Japanese Hitoshi Igarashi, victim of several stab wounds in 1991.
“Thirty years have passed,” he said, however, in the fall of 2018. “Now everything is fine. I was 41 at the time (of the fatwa), I am 71 now. We live in a world where the issues of concern change very quickly. There are now many other reasons to be afraid, other people to kill…”.
Knighted in 2007 by the Queen of England, to the great displeasure of Muslim extremists, this master of magical realism, a man of immense culture who calls himself apolitical, has written in English some fifteen novels, stories for young people, short stories and trials.
“His fight is ours, universal”, launched French President Emmanuel Macron on Twitter, ensuring that he was “today, more than ever, by his side”.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was “appalled that Sir Salman Rushdie was stabbed while exercising a right that we should never stop defending”, referring to freedom of expression.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said through his spokesman that he was “horrified” by the attack, adding “in no way was the violence a response to words”. “This act of violence is appalling,” said US President Joe Biden’s security adviser, Jake Sullivan.
“Nothing justifies a fatwa, a death sentence,” said Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical newspaper decimated by an Islamist attack in 2015.
In his editorial, Riss, editor-in-chief and one of the few survivors of the 2015 attack, castigates “little mediocre spiritual leaders, intellectually null and often culturally ignorant” who attack “the freedom of thought, to reflect and express themselves” because they are “so many threats against (their) hold on the minds.