Salman Rushdie, novelist who drew death threats, is stabbed in neck at New York lecture - The Straits Times

NEW YORK (REUTERS) - Mr Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born novelist who spent years in hiding after he was ordered killed by Iran in 1989 because of his writing, was stabbed in the neck as he was about to give a lecture in New York state on Friday (Aug 12), according to police and an eyewitness.

A man rushed to the stage at the Chautauqua Institution and attacked Mr Rushdie as he was being introduced to give a talk on artistic freedom to an audience of hundreds, an eyewitness said.

A State Trooper present at the event took the attacker into custody, police said.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul said Mr Rushdie was alive and “getting the care he needs.”

Mr Rushdie, 75, was taken by helicopter to a hospital but police said his condition was not yet known.

Police did not give a motive for the attack and it was not clear what kind of weapon was used.

The author fell to the floor when the man attacked him, and was then surrounded by a small group of people who held up his legs, seemingly to send more blood to his upper body, as the attacker was restrained, according to a witness attending the lecture who asked not to be named.

Mr Rushdie, who was born into an Indian Muslim family, has faced death threats for his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, which some Muslims said contained blasphemous passages.

The novel was banned in many countries with large Muslim populations upon its 1988 publication.

A year later, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran’s supreme leader, pronounced a fatwa, or religious edict, calling upon Muslims to kill the novelist for blasphemy.

Mr Rushdie went into hiding for many years. The Iranian government said in 1998 it would no longer back the fatwa, and Mr Rushdie has lived relatively openly in recent years.

Iranian organisations, some affiliated with the government, have raised a bounty worth millions of dollars for Rushdie’s murder. And Khomeini’s successor as Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said as late as 2017 that the fatwa was still valid.

Mr Rushdie published a memoir about his life under the fatwa called “Joseph Anton", the pseudonym he used while under police protection. His new novel Victory City is due to be published in February.

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2022-08-12 17:36:03Z
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