Also read this earlier interview with Rushdie: ‘I was about to go crazy’
British author Salman Rushdie (75) was stabbed during an event in the American state of New York when he was about to give a lecture. A man stormed onto the stage and began punching and stabbing Rushdie, an AP reporter who witnessed the incident reported. Rushdie was then treated onstage. The attacker has been arrested, according to police.
The severity of Rushdie’s injuries is not yet known. The writer was stabbed in the neck and was taken to a hospital by helicopter reports the police of the US state. The person Rushdie was to interview suffered minor head injuries.
The writer has been receiving death threats for his book since the 1980s The Devil’s Verses, which is portrayed by some as blasphemous. The book is banned in Iran and several other Islamic countries. Iran’s then leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Rushdie over the book, calling for the author’s death. The Iranian government has since distanced itself from Khomeini’s fatwa, but several Muslim extremists still believe that Rushdie deserves death for the way he portrays the prophet Mohammed in his book.
Other attacks
In 1989, a bomb intended for Rushdie exploded in London, killing only the terrorist. The translator of the Japanese version of The Devil’s Verses was murdered in 1991 by an unknown assailant. Two years later, Rushdie’s Norwegian publisher was injured in an attack.
The Devil’s Verses eventually became an international bestseller. Rushdie wrote the Boekenweekgift in 2001, making it the first non-Dutch writer to write this annually published novella. In the autobiographical novel Joseph Anton from 2012, Rushdie discussed what the issuing of the fatwa and its consequences had personally done to him. Pluim Publishers announced on Wednesday
#Author #Salman #Rushdie #stabbed #event