Author Salman RushdieIs tended toAfter he was attacked at an event at Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua (New York),
Photo: Joshua Goodman/AP/Shutterstock
Salman RushdieAt an event in western New York, he was stabbed and seriously injured. on Friday. The 75-year-old author — who has faced death threats over his writing for decades, including a longstanding fatwa issued by the former supreme leader of Iran — survived the attack but suffered numerous serious wounds and remains hospitalized in critical condition, his son said Sunday. Hadi Matar (a 24-year old New Jersey resident) was brought before the judge. onSaturday was charged with attempted murder and assault. He pleaded guilty and is currently being held without bail. Here is what we have so far.
Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie, said Sunday in a statement that, “He’s off the ventilator, so the road to recovery has begun. It will be long; the injuries are severe, but his condition is headed in the right direction.”Wylie declared Friday night that Rushdie “will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.”
Rushdie’s son, Zafar, said Sunday that the writer was still in critical condition, but able to speak. “Though his life-changing injuries are severe, his usual feisty and defiant sense of humor remains intact,”He stated. “We are so grateful to all the audience members who bravely leapt to his defense and administered first aid, along with the police and doctors who have cared for him and for the outpouring of love and support from around the world.”
A family statement… @SalmanRushdie #SalmanRushdie pic.twitter.com/tMrAkoqliq
— Zafar Rushdie (@ZafRushdie) August 14, 2022
The attack started Friday morning at 10:45 AM. RushdieHenry Reese, the 73-year-old co-speaker, was also preparing toSpeaking from the Chautauqua Institution’s Amphitheater, Matar, the assailant, ran onto the stage and attacked the author. He stabbed him ten more times before being subdued by police and taken into custody.
“Within about 15 seconds, someone jumped onstage and began to pound Mr. Rushdie,”Charlie Savenor was standing about 50 feet away when the assailant struck. The attacker repeatedly hit the author. “I saw the arm go up and down.”According to reports, the attacker was dressed in black and wearing a mask. “did not say anything,”Savenor was added.
Jason Schmidt, Chautauqua County District Attorney, called it a “targeted, unprovoked, preplanned attack” during Matar’s arraignment, noting that it wasn’t yet clear whether he acted alone.
#SalmanRushdie just attacked onstage at @chq @NBCNews @ABC @cnnbrk pic.twitter.com/I1XT6AmkhK
— Charles Savenor (@CharlieSavenor) August 12, 2022
Splattered blood could be seen onThe stage and background near where RushdieIt was attacked.
Bloodstains onA screen is placed behind the scene of the attack.
Photo: Joshua Goodman/AP/Shutterstock
“Rushdie was quickly surrounded by a small group of people who held up his legs, presumably to send more blood to his chest,”According to the Associated Press, he was already taken by helicopter. toA hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania was where he received hours of surgery.
Salmon RushdieHe was stabbed at Chautauqua. He’s onThe stage being treated. Before his scheduled speech. pic.twitter.com/xqeM79WseB
— Mary Newsom (@marynewsom) August 12, 2022
Reese, co-founder of Pittsburgh’s nonprofit City of Asylum. toHe shook his head. He called it later the assault on Rushdie “an attack against his body, his life, and against every value that he stood for.”
Salman RushdieThis was taken toThe helicopter transports patients to the hospital.
Author Salman RushdieAfter taking the stage at an event hosted by Chautauqua Institute, he was stabbed.
This man has been detained by police.-#NYPD#SalmanRushdie #Newyork pic.twitter.com/M2xt3nicbh
— Chaudhary Parvez (@ChaudharyParvez) August 12, 2022
RushdieReese and were invited toTalk to “a discussion of the United States as asylum for writers and other artists in exile and as a home for freedom of creative expression,”According to the Chautauqua Institution’s website.
It is situated about 55 miles southwest from Buffalo. An usher at the event told the New York Times that there didn’t appear toThere was no additional security for the participants of the discussion. A Guardian attendee stated that food and drink were prohibited in the amphitheater. There was however no screening. There were, however, a state trooper and a sheriff’s deputy assigned toThe event. Governor Kathy Hochul stated onFriday, the state trooper saved Rushdie’s life.
There is more information slowly coming out about Hadi Matar, the assailant. His Fairview, New Jersey, home was reportedly searched and questioned by FBI agents on Friday. Saturday’s District Attorney Schmidt announced that the 24-year-old had been granted an advance pass toThe Chautauqua Institution Event, to which he traveled toBus. He was wearing a fake identification and had arrived on the same day.
According to The Associated Press, Matar was conceived in the U.S. toParents from Lebanon who immigrated to Yaroun, southern Lebanon. “Flags of the Iran-backed Shia militant group Hezbollah, along with portraits of Hezbollah and Iranian leaders, were visible across Yaroun before journalists visiting Saturday were asked to leave,”The AP stated.
NBC New York reports the following: to a law-enforcement person with direct knowledge of the investigation, “a preliminary law-enforcement review of Matar’s social-media accounts shows he is sympathetic to Shia extremism and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps causes,”But shows “no definitive links”Between Matar and the group. Then onVICE World News reported on Sunday that Matar had been in contact with members the IRGC. toEuropean and Middle Eastern intelligence officers who spoke to the publication:
NATO counter-terrorism officials from Europe said that the stabbing was all signs of a terrorist attack. “guided”attack: where an intelligence agency talks a supporter into action without direct support. … There’s no evidence Iranian officials were involved in organising or orchestrating the attack upon Rushdie. Officials from security would not provide further details if they confirmed that the contact was made via social media. onThe nature of the communications is being investigated. They did not reveal who initiated the contact, when it occurred, or what was discussed.
“A 24-year-old born in the United States did not come up with Salman Rushdie as a target on his own,”A Middle Eastern intelligence official made the comment to VICE. VICE. tothe country and, if so, whether they had been trained by Hezbollah militants there. Sunday’s statement was issued by Antony Blinken Secretary of State condemning the attack on Rushdie’s life, and though he did not directly implicate Iran in Friday’s attack, he called attention toHow the Iranian regime has changed “incited violence against Rushdie for generations.”
RushdieDuring his writing career, he received numerous death threats. Most infamous was the 1989 Fatwa (death sentence), which Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (the late Iranian supreme leader) ordered. Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, which many Muslims considered blasphemous.
Initial threats and a death sentence were made. Rushdie toSpend nearly a decade hiding from the British government. However, the author had already resumed what he describes as “a” “very normal”Life in the past 20 years.
Also, the fatwa was applied toAnyone who was involved in publishing The Satanic Verses. In 1991, two translators of The Satanic Verses were attacked: Its Japanese translator, the Islamic scholar Hitoshi Igarashi, was stabbed and killed at a university near Tokyo; the book’s Italian translator, Ettore Capriolo, was attacked and stabbed in his home in Milan but survived. 1993 saw the setting ablaze a large mob that targeted Aziz Nesin, the Turkish leftist author, as well as the Turkish translator. to37 people were killed in a Sivas hotel shooting (Nesin managed to escape). Then, in Oslo, a gunman opened fire later in the year. on the book’s Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, who was shot three times in the back but survived.
Hitoshi Igarashi was a Japanese scholar of Persian and Arabic literature. In 1991, he was killed for translating. Salman Rushdie’s novel. Translators have been killed for their books. pic.twitter.com/zTuqeDJHEh
— Alina Stefanescu (@aliner) August 13, 2022
By the end of 1989, The Satanic Verses (which rose near the top of Amazon’s list of best sellers in literature and fiction over the weekend) had been effectively banned in more than a dozen countries, and prompted numerous protests around the world — some of them deadly. The book was also the subject of multiple bombings at bookstores across the U.S.
We still don’t know much about this assailant, his motives and how he got there, but at this time, we have not been able to confirm any links between Hadi Matar members and the Iranian regime or any of its associates.
Iran reformers are long in search of reform toDisplace the country from fatwa on Rushdie, but as Robin Wright explained Sunday at the New Yorker, the death sentence was never disavowed by the country’s hard-line clerics. A religious foundation in Iran offered more than $3,000,000 as a reward in 2012. Rushdie’s death.
“Iran certainly doesn’t benefit in any way from staging this attack, given its own myriad political, economic, and social crises,”Nader Hashemi is the director of the Center for Middle East Studies, University of Denver. to Slate on Friday. Hashemi, noting the shocking attack, stressed how “the political and global context of the Salman Rushdie saga is very different at this moment in time than it was when the death sentence was first proclaimed, over 30 years ago,”And that “there has been no discussion, chatter, [or] indication that anything like this was on the horizon.”
In recent years, the country has seen a drastic shift. “Rigid ideologues now dominate the executive, legislative, judicial, and military branches,”Wright notes that Iran’s one news source republished fatwa only five days before the attack. on Rushdie. There are also indications that the regime elements have become bolder in their efforts to target enemies abroad. The Justice Department has filed charges against a member the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for plotting to assassinate John Bolton, former Trump national security advisor, and former Trump administration secretary-of-state Mike Pompeo.
Iran’s hard-line media outlets and pro-regime media outlets have proclaimed the attack on RushdieWith several framing it as justifiable revenge, onAn apostate. As the Observer observed Saturday, senior government officials were not open to comment. A handful of Iranians spoke out as well. toThe Associated Press on Saturday, with some worrying that the attack — and the fatwa — would end up further isolating Iran from the world.
This is an ongoing story. The post has been updated.
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