Salman Rushdie was to give a lecture at a New York State University this Friday, August 12 near Buffalo. He and Henry Reese (co-founder and president of City of Asylum in Pittsburgh) were to discuss the role of the United States as a place of refuge and asylum for persecuted writers.
Shortly before the start of the event, a man “stabbed or hit him”, the Associated Press quickly reported. The attacker was immediately arrested, while the novelist was taken to hospital. the New York Times reports that Salman Rushdie was stabbed multiple times in the neck but did not require resuscitation at the scene. The severity of his injuries is not known. Henry Reese was injured in the head but more lightly, explains the BBC.
The prestigious writers’ association PEN International reacted to condemn the attack and support Salman Rushdie on Twitter:
Death threats for more than thirty years
This American-British intellectual of Indian origin has long been placed under police protection because of a fatwa issued against him by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 after the publication of satanic verses, his fourth novel, the previous year. The release of this novel, which had been in the running for the prestigious Booker Prize (a prize that Rushdie had already won in 1981 for midnight children), had unleashed passions, some Islamists deeming it blasphemous.
“This book by Rushdie sparked strong protests around the world”reports today, laconic, the Iran Press agency from Tehran.
“The author has been under police protection by the UK government for many years and has received numerous threats of assassination. Several bookstores were attacked and the novel was banned in many countries, including India,” remember indian site Scroll.
The British daily The Guardian notes that a bounty of $2.8 million had been offered to anyone who assassinated Salman Rushdie (a sum raised to $3.3 million ten years ago by a semi-official Iranian religious foundation) and adds that “The Iranian government has long distanced itself from Khomeini’s decree, but anti-Rushdie sentiment persists”.
In 2012 Rushdie published a memoir, Joseph Anton, on the fatwa. Joseph Anton was the pseudonym he used to travel to, among other places, India, his country of origin, the United Kingdom, where he lived for a long time, and the United States, where he had taken up residence since 2000.
Cantor of freedom of expression in the face of obscurantism
Salman Rushdie has published nearly twenty books and was knighted by the British crown in 2007, which, the Qatari site recalls Al Jazeera, “triggered protests in several countries of the Muslim world”.
Bangladeshi novelist Taslima Nasreen, who was also the subject of a fatwa in Bangladesh in 1993 for criticizing Islam, expressed her dismay and concern on social networks. “I just learned that Salman Rushdie was attacked in New York. I’m really shocked. I never thought this would happen. He lives in the West, and he has been protected since 1989. If attacked, anyone who criticizes Islam can be attacked. I’m worried, ” she writes.
Since 1989, Salman Rushdie has been one of the most famous symbols of freedom of expression and the threats posed to it by fundamentalism.