Writer Salman Rushdie is on a ventilator on Saturday fighting for his life and his literary agent said ‘the news is not good’.
Rushdie, 75, was stabbed multiple times during an event in the US. “Salman is close to losing an eye,” agent Andrew Wylie said in a statement.
His arm has been severed, and her liver was stabbed and damaged.” Hadi Matar, 24, who was arrested at the scene of the stabbing, appeared in court Saturday, New York State Police said.The attacker was arrested by a state police officer present at the event police said.
Ralph Henry Reese, 73, the other speaker of the event, suffered a minor head injury, according to police. The event was about 500 kilometers from New York City on Education and Spirituality. The center took place at the Chautauqua Institution. Rushdie attracted the ire of many Muslims, who considered his 1988 novel, ‘The Satanic Verses’ to be blasphemy.
A fatwa was issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khamenei, the then (now late) supreme religious leader of Iran, to kill him (Rushdie) over Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses. Iran also announced a reward of more than $3 million for the person who will kill Rushdie.
More than 33 years later, Rushdie, 75, was stabbed by a man on Friday at an event at the Chautauqua Institute in western New York, when he was about to begin his lecture. Authorities identified the attacker as 24-year-old Hadi Matar, a New Jersey resident, but did not yet know the motive behind the attack. Rushdie was stabbed in the neck and in the stomach. He is currently on ventilator and his liver has been damaged. This attack has shocked the whole world. World leaders and literary figures have said they were shocked by the attack on Rushdie.
Salman Rushdie was born on June 19, 1947, into a Kashmiri Muslim family in Bombay (now Mumbai). In the same year India got independence from British rule. Rushdie is the son of lawyer Anees Ahmed Rushdie and teacher Negin Bhatt, who studied at the University of Cambridge.
He was awarded the prestigious Booker Prize in 1981 for ‘Midnight’s Children’, set against the backdrop of India’s journey from British rule to independence and the partition of the country. This award gave him a new identity in the literary world around the world, but a few years later, due to ‘The Sanetic Verses’ published in 1988, the supreme leader of Iran issued a fatwa against him. The controversial book ‘The Satanic Verses’ has been banned in Iran since 1988. Many Muslims believe that Rushdie has committed blasphemy through this book.
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