Moments before novelist Salman Rushdie was to deliver a lecture on Friday at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York, a man rushed the stage and stabbed him repeatedly before he was subdued.
Rushdie was immediately airlifted to a hospital for surgery. According to a Friday evening email to The Associated Press from his agent, Andrew Wylie, Rushdie’s injuries included a damaged liver and severed nerves in his arm. Additionally, he will likely lose an eye.
The man responsible for the brutal attack, Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, New Jersey, was arrested at the venue.
At his Saturday arraignment, Matar pleaded not guilty to charges of second degree attempted murder and second degree assault, “with intent to cause physical injury with a deadly weapon,” according to CNN.
Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt detailed Rushdie’s injuries during the arraignment which included “three stab wounds to the right side of the front of his neck, four stab wounds to his stomach, a puncture wound to his right eye, a puncture wound to his chest, and a laceration on his right thigh,” the report said.
Matar was refused bail.
In September 1988, Rushdie published his most famous novel, “The Satanic Verses.” The Washington Post describes the novel as a “modern-day epic that uses magical realism — a mixture of realistic narration and fantasy elements. It begins with a hijacked plane exploding over the English Channel. As two of the passengers fall from the sky, they are transformed — one into the angel Gabriel, the other into the devil. Their experiences and visions make up the rest of the story as it moves in and out of dreams.”
The Indian-born British-American Rushdie makes several “creative references — some veiled, some not — to Muhammad, Islam and the Quran,” the report noted.
Additionally, The Washington Free Beacon reported that Rushdie refers to Muhammad as “Mahound” in the novel, “a derogatory term for the prophet used by Medieval Christians.”
In February 1989, Iran’s late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who considered the book to be blasphemous, issued a “fatwa” which is a religious edict. He called for “all valiant Muslims wherever they may be in the world to kill” Rushdie and “all the editors and publishers aware of its contents … without delay.”
The fatwa goes on to say that “whoever is killed in this cause will be a martyr.”
A multimillion dollar bounty was placed on Rushdie’s head which has been ratcheted up on at least three occasions. The amount of the original bounty differs among media outlets, however Reuters reports that it was increased to $2.5 million in 1997 and to $3.3 million in 2012. According to a separate Reuters article published in February 2016, the 27th anniversary of the fatwa, Iranian news outlets upped the bounty by $600,000.
The Iranians never forget.
Following the fatwa, Rushdie spent the next nine years in hiding in London.
The novel was banned in several countries and protests and book burnings took place around the world, the Free Beacon reported. Moreover, a Japanese translator was stabbed to death in 1991 and others associated with the book were attacked.
In a 1989 interview with BBC Radio, Rushdie said, “Frankly I wish I had written a more critical book. … Religious leaders who are able to behave like this, and then say this is a religion which must be above any kind of whisper of criticism, that doesn’t add up.”
On Saturday, a Reuters article about the attack said, although there had been no official response to this news from Iran, several hardline Iranian newspapers were applauding Matar’s attack on Rushdie.
Tehran newspaper Kayhan wrote: “A thousand bravos … to the brave and dutiful person who attacked the apostate and evil Salman Rushdie in New York. The hand of the man who tore the neck of God’s enemy must be kissed.”
A headline in a second Iranian news outlet, Vatan Emrooz, read, “Knife in Salman Rushdie’s neck.”
Another, The Khorasan Daily, declared: “Satan on the way to hell.”
The report added that Asr Iran (newspaper) carried an often repeated quote by Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei, the current supreme leader of Iran, which says that his predecessor’s “arrow … will one day hit the target.”
Reuters noted that Twitter suspended Khamenei’s account in 2019 after he tweeted that the Rushdie fatwa was “solid and irrevocable.”
Apparently, the Iranians take fatwas quite seriously and the Biden administration would be wise to recognize this. Rushdie is not the only thing the Islamic Republic wants utterly obliterated.
We have no idea how many hostile foreign agents have already entered the country through our open southern border. Nor do we know how many people already here are willing to heed the call of a radical theocrat on the other side of the world and bring blood.
All of this begs the question: Why does the U.S. continue to chase a nuclear deal with Iran?
Why is Biden still negotiating with Iran on a new “deal” when he knows they are actively trying to assassinate former government officials on U.S. soil? https://t.co/03G4diqk1h
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) August 10, 2022
A previous version of this article appeared on The Western Journal.
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“Frankly I wish I had written a more critical book. … Religious leaders who are able to behave like this, and then say this is a religion which must be above any kind of whisper of criticism, that doesn’t add up.”
Compared to the amount of criticism and outright blasphemy that is thrown, daily, at the Bible, and Rushdie makes a resounding and clear point.