Booker Prize winning Indian-born British author Sir Salman Rushdie, 75, has been stabbed in the neck and abdomen by a man who rushed the stage at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York. He had been preparing to deliver a lecture on the United States being a safe haven for exiled writers and other artists under threat of persecution at the Institution’s annual summer literary festival.
The attacker was subdued by members of the audience before being taken into custody by a state trooper present at the event. Police have named the suspected attacker as Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, New Jersey. Rushdie received medical attention from a Doctor in the audience before being airlifted to a nearby medical facility.
Although the Police and FBI have yet to formally identify the motive behind the attack, Rushdie has been the subject of threats and attempts on his life in the past.
In 1988 Rushdie published his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses. The novel, a post-modernist, magical realism masterpiece was both lauded and loathed upon release, notably sparking outrage and calls for censorship and prohibition in Muslim communities as it was perceived by some Islamic scholars to be overly blasphemous.
The novel was banned in several predominantly Muslim countries, causing protests where it was burned in numerous demonstrations.
In 1989 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a fatwā against Rushdie, stating, “I inform the proud Muslim people of the world that the author of The Satanic Verses book, which is against Islam, the Prophet and the Koran, and all those involved in its publication who are aware of its content are sentenced to death.”
Rushdie subsequently went into hiding for nine years, documenting his experiences in his 2012 Autobiography Joseph Anton: A Memoir. In 1998 Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said Iran would no longer back the fatwā, proclaiming it “finished”; however, the fatwā has never been formally lifted and the bounty was even increased in 2016. Despite this, Rushdie has lived relatively openly in recent years, moving to New York in 2000.
Rushdie’s literary agent, Andrew Wylie, said that Rushdie was on a ventilator and could not speak. “The news is not good … Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.”
Salman’s first novel since 2019, Victory City, is set to release in February 2023.
Words by Luke Horwitz
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