The attack caused consternation around the world, but was celebrated in the Iranian media. According to a US media report, the suspect is said to have sympathized with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Rushdie himself had said just two weeks ago in view of calls for assassination by Iranian clerics: “That was a long time ago, you know, my life is now relatively normal once more.”
The incident happened on Friday at a reading in the town of Chautauqua, in western New York State. Rushdie was taken to hospital, operated on and was put on a ventilator, according to his manager Andrew Wylie.
There was initially no new information regarding his condition on Saturday. According to police, Rushdie was stabbed at least once in the neck and stomach. The 75-year-old was taken to a local hospital by helicopter. He cannot speak and will likely lose an eye, Wylie wrote, according to the New York Times. Nerves in his arm were severed and his liver was damaged. “The news is not good.”
Politics professor Carl LeVan, who attended the discussion, said the attacker ran onto the stage and stabbed Rushdie “repeatedly and violently,” apparently with intent to kill.
There were initially no details regarding the background to the attack. The alleged attacker is said to have lived in Fairfield, in the state of New Jersey near New York, and acted alone, police said. His family apparently comes from a village in southern Lebanon. According to an AFP reporter in the town of Yarun, the parents are said to be divorced. The father still lives there, but he refused contact with journalists. The village chief said the suspect was “born and raised in the United States.”
It was initially unclear whether the knife attack was related to the decades-old fatwa. Rushdie was sentenced to death more than 30 years ago by fatwa: Because of his work “The Satanic Verses” from 1988, the then Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini published the religious legal document that called for the author to be killed. Khomeini accused Rushdie of insulting Islam, the Prophet and the Koran in his novel.
The crime took place at a lecture by Rushdie at the so-called Chautauqua Institution, an educational and cultural center – as part of a series entitled “More than Shelter” that explores the United States as a haven for writers in exile and the persecution of artists should be discussed.
According to the police, the young man stormed the stage at the event, which was attended by hundreds of people, around 11:00 a.m. local time (5:00 p.m. CEST) and stabbed Rushdie. “Several event staff and spectators fell on the suspect and took him to the ground,” a spokesman said. A police officer arrested the 24-year-old. Meanwhile, Rushdie was treated by a doctor from the audience until emergency services arrived. According to information from the US broadcaster CNN, the institute had refused to increase security two days earlier. However, it is unclear whether the assassination attempt on Rushdie might have been prevented with the recommended measures, the broadcaster wrote.
The New York Times quoted a witness as saying: “There was only one attacker. He was dressed in black. He was wearing a loose black garment. He ran towards him at lightning speed.” An Associated Press reporter said the attacker punched or stabbed Rushdie 10 to 15 times. The interviewer, who was also attacked, suffered a head injury, police said. However, he was able to leave the hospital in the meantime.
At the time, the Ayatollah’s Islamic legal opinion not only called for the killing of Rushdie, but also of all those who were involved in distributing the book. Since then, Rushdie has lived in constant danger of death, in different places, under an assumed name and under police protection. The situation only eased in the late 1990s. But the call to kill Rushdie was never lifted. Several translators of his works were injured or even killed in attacks, such as the Japanese Hitoshi Igarashi, who was murdered in 1991. Threats once morest events with Rushdie continued.
According to information from his publisher last year, the fatwa no longer had any meaning for Rushdie. He is no longer restricted in his freedom of movement and no longer needs bodyguards. He recently lived a largely normal life in New York. However, the years of hiding did not leave him untouched. He worked through this period in the 2012 autobiography Joseph Anton, named following his alias.
A few days ago, Rushdie told the Hamburg news magazine “stern” that he felt safe in the United States. “It was a long time ago,” Rushdie said in an interview with correspondent Raphael Geiger in late July when asked if he still feared for his life. “It was serious for a few years,” Rushdie continued. “But since I’ve been living in America, I haven’t had any problems.” However, the author also warned of the political climate and possible violence in the USA: The bad thing is “that death threats have become commonplace”.
Rushie was born in the year of Indian independence in 1947 in the metropolis of Mumbai (then Bombay). His parents were non-practicing Muslims. He always described himself as an atheist.
He later studied history at King’s College, Cambridge. He had his breakthrough as an author with the book “Midnight’s Children” (“Midnight’s Children”), which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1981.
Rushdie has published more than two dozen fiction, nonfiction, and other writings. His style is called Magical Realism, in which realistic events are interwoven with fantastic events. Nevertheless, he is absolutely committed to the truth. He sees this increasingly in danger, which is also the focus of his recently published essays, which came out in Germany under the title “Languages of Truth”. The writer, who has lived in New York for many years, braces himself once morest Trumpists and corona deniers. “Truth is a struggle, there’s no question. And maybe never as much as now,” he said in an interview with US broadcaster PBS last year.
