Author Salman Rushdie is helped by people after he was stabbed on stage before his scheduled speech at the Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, New York, US, August 12, 2022, in this screengrab taken from a social media video. Pilar Pintagro/via ReutersSalman Rushdie, the Indian-born novelist who spent years in hiding after Iran urged Muslims to kill him because of his writing, was stabbed in the neck and torso onstage at a lecture in New York state on Friday and airlifted to a hospital, police said.
Following hours of surgery, Rushdie was on a ventilator and unable to speak as of Friday evening. “The news is not good,” Andrew Wylie, his book agent, wrote in an email, reported news agency AP. “Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.” The 75-year-old author was to address a crowd of hundreds of people on the topic of artistic freedom when the incident took place. The attacker rushed to the stage at New York’s Chautauqua Institution and lunged at the novelist, stabbing him multiple times before police took him into custody.
Rushdie was born into a Muslim Kashmiri family in Bombay and moved to the UK. He has long faced death threats for his fourth novel, ‘The Satanic Verses,’ most prominently from Iran’s powerful cleric and leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who had pronounced a fatwa calling upon Muslims to kill the novelist.
Details are still sketchy about his condition and the man who attacked him, but according to reports, Rushdie was on stage at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York, when the attack took place. (REUTERS/Brian Snyder)
Minutes after author Salman Rushdie was stabbed on Friday, police took a 24-year-old man into custody. Law enforcement officials have identified the attacker as Hadi Matar. The 24-year-old man reportedly hails from New Jersey.
Police did not describe the weapon used. They said they have not zeroed in on the motive. “But we are working with the FBI, the Sheriff’s Office and we will determine what the cause of this was and what the motive for this attack was,” said Major Eugene Staniszewski of the New York State Police, reported PTI.
The attack on Salman Rushdie, the novelist who was stabbed in the neck and torso onstage at a lecture in New York on Friday, was appalling, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said.
"We're all praying for his speedy recovery. And we're thankful to good citizens and first responders for helping him so swiftly," he wrote on Twitter on Friday. (Reuters)
PEN America, an advocacy group for freedom of expression of which Salman Rushdie is a former president, said it was "reeling from shock and horror" at what it called an unprecedented attack on a writer in the United States.
"Salman Rushdie has been targeted for his words for decades but has never flinched nor faltered," Suzanne Nossel, PEN's chief executive, said in the statement. Earlier in the morning, Rushdie had emailed her to help with relocating Ukrainian writers seeking refuge, she said. (Reuters)
Authors, writers and activists across the globe condemned the attack on Salman Rushdie at a lecture stage in New York Friday.
Taking to Twitter, Indian writer Amitav Ghosh said he was “horrified” to learn about the attack, and wished Rushdie a speedy recovery.
Bangladeshi-Swedish writer Taslima Nasreen expressed her shock over the incident saying she “never thought such a thing would happen” and added that “if Salman Rushdie is attacked, anyone who is critical of Islam can be attacked.”
Since the publication of The Satanic Verses in September 1988, the British-Indian writer who won the Booker Prize for his Midnight’s Children (1981) has faced innumerable threats to his life. On February 14, 1989, Iran’s religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced a fatwa on Rushdie for “insulting Islam” with his novel. The repercussions of this would continue to be felt for decades to come. Even as Rushdie went into hiding following the fatwa, book bans, book burnings, firebombings and death threats continued unabated for years to come, raising important questions about freedom of expression in the arts around the world.
In an interview to Channel 4 in 1989, soon after the publication of The Satanic Verses, Rushdie had responded to the rising criticism of the book by making a case for freedom of expression. “If you don’t want to read a book, you don’t have to read it. It’s very hard to be offended by The Satanic Verses — it requires a long period of intense reading. It’s a quarter of a million words.”
“Yes, I would write The Satanic Verses again.”
That was Salman Rushdie in January 2013, in The Indian Express, where he had dropped by for Idea Exchange, the newsroom’s weekly interaction with newsmakers.
He was referring to his 1988 novel that had set off a series of death threats against him and forced him to live in hiding for nearly a decade following the pronouncement of a fatwa against him by Iran’s religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini.
Salman Rushdie, whose novel “The Satanic Verses” drew death threats from Iran’s leader in the 1980s, was stabbed in the neck and abdomen Friday by a man who rushed the stage as the author was about to give a lecture in western New York. A bloodied Rushdie, 75, was flown to a hospital and underwent surgery.
His agent, Andrew Wylie, said the writer was on a ventilator Friday evening, with a damaged liver, severed nerves in an arm and an eye he was likely to lose. Police identified the attacker as Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, New Jersey. He was arrested at the scene and was awaiting arraignment. State police Maj. Eugene Staniszewski said the motive for the stabbing was unclear.