Dhe writer Salman Rushdie was stabbed by an attacker while attempting to give a lecture in the western New York town of Chautauqua just before 11 a.m. local time on Friday morning. A reporter for the Associated Press news agency witnessed a man throwing himself on the writer in the auditorium of the Chautauqua Institution before the start of the event. The writer fell to the ground, the attacker was overpowered and arrested by the police. Eyewitnesses reported a pool of blood. It was found that Rushdie’s pulse was still beating. Police said he sustained stab wounds in his neck.
Since the publication of the novel “The Satanic Verses” in 1988, the writer, who was born in Bombay in 1947, has been threatened with death by radical Muslims because they consider the portrayal of the prophet Mohammed in Rushdie’s novel to be blasphemous. In 1989, the Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a learned ruling based on Islamic law, a so-called fatwa, which pronounced Rushdie’s death and called on Muslims around the world to carry out the sentence. A bounty of the equivalent of $3 million has been put up. Even after Khomeini’s death, the Iranian leadership did not withdraw the death threat.
Since then, Rushdie has lived under personal protection and withdrew completely from the public eye for many years. In 2000 he immigrated to the United States from Great Britain. In Chautauqua, Rushdie was due to confer with Henry Reese, founder of the largest call center company in the United States. In 2004, Reese founded the City of Asylum in Pittsburgh, a charity that maintains shelters for persecuted writers from around the world in the industrial Pennsylvania city.
Several hundred spectators witnessed the attack. The hall was cleared. Rushdie was taken to a hospital by helicopter. Reese was also slightly injured.
According to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, the intervention of a police officer saved the life of author Salman Rushdie after an attack. “And I want to commend the state police, it was a state police officer who stood up and saved his life, protected him,” Hochul said Friday in the city of Buffalo. Rushdie is alive and getting the help he needs at a local hospital.
US Senator and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted that the attack was “shocking and appalling. It is an attack on freedom of speech and thought, which are two core values of our country and the Chautauqua Institution.” He hopes Rushdie will make a speedy and full recovery and that the perpetrator will be held accountable.
