Salman Rushdie, who spent years in hiding after an Iranian fatwa ordered his killing, was on a ventilator and could lose an eye following a stabbing attack at a literary event in New York state on Friday.
The Indian-born British-American author of The Satanic Verses, which sparked fury among some Muslims who believed it was blasphemous, had to be airlifted to a hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania, for emergency surgery following the attack.
His agent said in a statement obtained by the New York Times that “the news is not good.”
Photo: screengrab from Twitter user @HoratioGates3 via Reuters
“Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged,” agent Andrew Wylie said, adding that Rushdie could not speak.
Carl LeVan, an American University politics professor attending the literary event, said that the assailant rushed onto the stage where Rushdie was seated and “stabbed him repeatedly and viciously.”
Several people ran to the stage and took the suspect to the ground before a New York State Police trooper present at the event arrested him. A doctor in the audience administered medical care until emergency first responders arrived.
Photo: Reuters
State police identified the suspected attacker as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old from Fairfield, New Jersey, adding that he stabbed Rushdie in the neck as well as the abdomen. The motive for the stabbing remains unclear.
An interviewer onstage, 73-year-old Ralph Henry Reese, was also injured in the face, but has been released from a hospital, police said.
The attack took place at the Chautauqua Institution, which hosts arts programs in a lakeside community 110km south of Buffalo.
“What many of us witnessed today was a violent expression of hate that shook us to our core,” the Chautauqua Institution said in a statement.
LeVan, a Chautauqua regular, said the suspect “was trying to stab him as many times as possible before he was subdued,” adding that he believed the man “was trying to kill” Rushdie.
“There were gasps of horror and panic from the crowd,” the professor said.
Rushdie, 75, was propelled into the spotlight with his second novel, Midnight’s Children, in 1981, which won international praise and Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize for its portrayal of post-independence India.
His 1988 book The Satanic Verses transformed his life when Iran’s first supreme leader, ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, ordering his killing.
The novel was considered by some Muslims as disrespectful of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed.
Conservative media in Iran hailed the attack on Rushdie, with the state-owned Kayhan saying the “neck of the devil” had been “cut by a razor.”
“Bravo to this courageous and duty-conscious man who attacked the apostate and depraved Salman Rushdie in New York,” said the newspaper, whose chief was appointed by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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