Authors, activists, and government officials cited Rushdie’s courage and longtime advocacy of free speech despite risks to his own safety. Writer and long-time friend Ian McEwan said Rushdie was “an inspiring advocate for persecuted writers and journalists around the world”, and actor and author Kal Penn cited him as a role model “for all a generation of artists, especially for many of us in the South Asian diaspora towards whom he has shown incredible warmth”.
President Joe Biden said in a statement Saturday that he and first lady Jill Biden were “shocked and saddened” by the attack.
“Salman Rushdie, with his vision of humanity, with his unparalleled sense of history, with his refusal to be intimidated or silenced, represents essential and universal ideals,” the statement said. “The truth. courage Resilience. The ability to share ideas without fear. These are the basic components of any free and open society.”
Rishi Sunak, one of two candidates seeking to become Britain’s next prime minister, told London’s Telegraph that the attack should serve as a wake-up call to the West about Iran.
Rushdie, a native of India who has since lived in Britain and the United States, is known for his surreal and satirical prose style, beginning with his 1981 Booker Prize-winning novel Midnight’s Children, in the which harshly criticized the then Prime Minister of India, Indira. Gandhi.
The Satanic Verses drew death threats after its publication in 1988, and many Muslims considered a dream sequence based on the life of the Prophet Muhammad to be blasphemous, among other objections. Rushdie’s book had already been banned and burned in India, Pakistan and elsewhere before Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death in 1989.
Acclaimed author Salman Rushdie. Credit: AP
Khomeini died that same year, but the fatwa remains in effect. Iran’s current supreme leader, Khamenei, never issued a fatwa of his own to withdraw the edict, although Iran in recent years has not focused on the writer.
In an interview with the German magazine Stern in recent weeks, however, Rushdie said he believed the danger had passed.
“My life is very normal again. I was 36 when I started The Satanic Verses. Now I’m 75. It’s been four decades.”
Investigators were working to determine whether the suspect, born a decade after The Satanic Verses was published, was acting alone.
Law enforcement officers arrest Hadi Matar (center) after the stabbing of Salman Rushdie. Credit: AP
District Attorney Schmidt alluded to the fatwa as a potential reason to argue against bail.
“Even if this court were to set bail at $1 million, we run the risk that the bond could be met,” Schmidt said.
“I don’t care about their resources. We understand that the agenda that was carried out yesterday is something that was adopted and sanctioned by larger groups and organizations far beyond the jurisdictional boundaries of Chautauqua County,” the prosecutor said.
Barone, the public defender, said after the hearing that Matar has been open with him and that he will spend the next few weeks trying to get to know his client, including whether he has psychological or addiction issues.
Matar is from Fairview, New Jersey. Rosaria Calabrese, manager of the State of Fitness Boxing Club, a small, tight-knit gym in nearby northern Bergen, said Matar joined on April 11 and participated in about 27 group sessions for beginners looking for improve his fitness before emailing him a few days ago to tell him. he wanted to cancel his membership because “he wouldn’t be back for a while”.
Gym owner Desmond Boyle said he saw “nothing violent” in Matar, describing him as polite and calm but always looking “tremendously sad”. He said Matar resisted attempts by him and others to accommodate and engage him.
“He had this look every time he came in. He looked like he was having the worst day of his life,” Boyle said.
Matar was born in the United States to parents who immigrated from Yaroun in southern Lebanon, said the town’s mayor, Ali Tehfe.
Flags of the Iranian-backed Shiite militant group Hezbollah are visible throughout the village, along with portraits of leader Hassan Nasrallah, Khamenei, Khomeini and slain Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.
Journalists who visited Yaroun on Saturday were asked to leave. Hezbollah spokesmen did not respond to requests for comment.
Iran’s theocratic government and its state media did not assign a motive for the attack. In Tehran, some Iranians interviewed by the AP praised the attack on a perpetrator they believe tarnished the Islamic faith, while others worried it would further isolate their country.
On Friday, an AP reporter witnessed the attacker stab or punch Rushdie about 10 to 15 times.
Event moderator Henry Reese, 73, suffered a facial injury and was treated and released from a hospital, police said. He and Rushdie had planned to talk about the United States as a haven for writers and other artists in exile.
A state trooper and a county sheriff’s deputy were assigned to Rushdie’s conference, and police said the trooper made the arrest. But afterward, some longtime visitors to the Chautauqua institution wondered why there wasn’t tighter security given the threats against Rushdie and a more than $3 million bounty on his head.
On Saturday, the center said it was increasing security through measures such as requiring photo ID to purchase gate passes, which previously could be obtained anonymously. Customers entering the amphitheater where Rushdie was attacked will also not be allowed to bring bags of any kind.
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The changes, along with an increased presence of armed police officers on the bucolic grounds, shocked Chautauquans, who had long enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere the nearly 150-year-old vacation colony is known for.
News of the stabbing has sparked renewed interest in The Satanic Verses, which topped the bestseller lists after the fatwa was issued in 1989. As of Saturday afternoon, the novel was at No. 13 on Amazon.com.
The death threats and bounty Rushdie faced for the book after its publication led him to go into hiding under a British government protection program, which included a 24-hour armed guard. After nine years in seclusion, Rushdie cautiously resumed more public appearances.
In 2012 he published a memoir about the fatwa titled Joseph Anton, the pseudonym he used while in hiding.
He said during a talk in New York that year that terrorism was really the art of fear: “The only way to defeat it is to decide not to be afraid.”
AP