Satanic Act: Salman Rushdie Stabbed On Stage Before Delivering Lecture at an Upstate New York Event
- The New York State Police identified the suspect in the attack as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old from New Jersey.
(This story has been updated)
Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa finally seems to have caught up with the author of “Satanic Verses.” Acclaimed author Salman Rushdie evaded the death threats of Islamic fundamentalists for over three decades, but on Friday, August 12, he is fighting for his life after being stabbed at a literary event in Upstate New York. The New York State Police identified the suspect in the attack as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old New Jersey man.
Rushdie was stabbed onstage as he was about to deliver a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York. It was a summer lecture series at the gated community that features arts and literary programming for nine weeks each summer.
As Rushdie was being introduced before the talk, a man rushed on the stage and “began “punching or stabbing Rushdie, “who almost immediately dropped to the ground,” news reports quoted an Associated Press reporter as saying. Rushdie suffered an “apparent stab wound to the neck,” police said in a statement. He was taken by helicopter to an area hospital. His condition “is not yet known.”
An endocrinologist who was in the audience, said Rushdie had multiple stab wounds, including one to the right side of his neck, and that there was a pool of blood under his body.
Bill Vasu, who was at the event told The New York Times that Rushdie had just come onstage and was seated in a chair as a staff member introduced him when the assailant rushed the stage and assaulted the author. “I could just see his fists sort of pounding on Salman,” Vasu said. He said, “a of people rushed to Rushdie’s aid, and quickly pinned the attacker to the ground.”
A state trooper who was assigned to the event “immediately took the suspect into custody,” police told Buffalo News.
Rita Landman, an endocrinologist who was in the audience, said Rushdie had multiple stab wounds, including one to the right side of his neck, and that there was a pool of blood under his body. “People were saying, ‘He has a pulse, he has a pulse he has a pulse.’”
According to latest reports, Rushdie in a bad shape. “The news is not good,” Rushdie’s agent Andrew Wylie was quoted in a Daily Beast report. “Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.” News reports also quoted the authorities as saying Matar was motivated “by fundamentalist extremism.”
The 75-year-old India-born Rushdie spent about 10 years under police protection in Britain, living in hiding after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, called for his execution in 1989 because his novel “The Satanic Verses” was considered offensive to Islam. “The book was banned in India, and he was barred from the country for more than a decade,” The New York Times reported.
The Iranian government announced it would no longer seek to enforce the fatwa in 1998. That year, Rushdie published a memoir, “Joseph Anton,” about life under the fatwa. The title came from the pseudonym he used while in hiding.