Iran state media PRAISES Salman Rushdie’s attacker

Iran’s deranged state media has today gleefully celebrated the sickening attack on Salman Rushdie, hailing the British author’s suspected knifeman and branding the novellist an ‘apostate’ and ‘heretic’ whose book The Satanic Verses ‘blasphemed’ the Prophet Muhammad. 

Rushdie, 75, was stabbed up to 15 times – including once in the neck – on stage in upstate New York – more than 30 years after the theocratic dictatorship in Tehran issued a fatwa calling for the murder of the writer and anyone involved with the publication of the 1988 novel.

The edict forced Sir Salman to go into hiding for a decade under an alias and round-the-clock police protection – and fuelled worldwide riots and book-burnings. 

Last night Iranian state media celebrated the shocking attack on Rushdie, calling him a ‘depraved heretic-writer’ and ‘apostate author’. An apostate is the term for someone who renounces a religious belief, which in Islamic theology is punishable by death. 

FARS News, a regime-owned outlet, also called Sir Salman an ‘apostate’ and accused him of having ‘insulted the Prophet of Islam (PBUH)’ with the book’s ‘anti-religious content.’

Iranian ultra-conservative newspaper Kayhan, whose chief Hossein Shariatmadari is a close confidant of current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, praised Rushdie’s suspected attacker, Hadi Matar, 24, from New Jersey – who US law enforcement last night said enquiries suggested was sympathetic to the Iranian regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

In an editorial in Saturday’s edition, Shariatmadari thundered: ‘Bravo to this courageous and duty-conscious man who attacked the apostate and depraved Salman Rushdie in New York. Let us kiss the hands of the one who tore the neck of the enemy of God with a knife.’

The Iranian regime has long stood by the fatwa, with Khamenei tweeting in 2019 that the fatwa ‘is based on divine verses, and just like divine verses, it is solid and irrevocable.’ 

Conservative Iranian pundit Keyvan Saedy said on Twitter: ‘This deserves congratulation: God willing, we will celebrate Salman Rushdie going to hell soon.’

Hossein Saremi, a conservative social media activist, added that a ‘lion’ had beaten Rushdie and that the attacker was part of ‘Islam’s soldiers without borders.’ He wrote: ‘Revenge may be delayed, but it will inevitably happen’.

A senior adviser to Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, Seyed Mohammad Marandi, said that he will not shed a tear for the writer ‘who spouts endless hatred and contempt for Muslims and Islam.’

Several accounts affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards also openly boasted about the attack. One called Syria News published a post saying: ‘The order was carried out at a place they never thought about. It’s not important if he doesn’t die; it’s important that they understand the battle is not over.’

Eghtesad Salem, a conservative news website, published a column saying that the attack was issuing a clear message to American officials.

It stated that they would be hunted down for the assassination of Iran’s top general, Qassim Suleimani, who was killed in a US airstrike in January 2020.

Majid Motamedi wrote: ‘Carrying out the order to murder Salman Rushdie 33 years after it was issued sends a message to American officials that they must fear Iran’s revenge for Gen Qassim Suleimani, until their death, even if the revenge takes 33 years.’

In Tehran, some willing to speak to The Associated Press offered praise for the attack targeting a writer they believe tarnished the Islamic faith with his 1988 book The Satanic Verses.

In the streets of Iran’s capital, images of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini still peer down at passers-by.

‘I don’t know Salman Rushdie, but I am happy to hear that he was attacked since he insulted Islam,’ said Reza Amiri, a 27-year-old deliveryman.

‘This is the fate for anybody who insults sanctities.’

Iranian dissidents pinned the blame for the attack on the regime in Tehran and specifically its leadership.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, Deputy Director of the Washington Office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, told Fox News Digital: ‘For the attempt to kill British author Salman Rushdie, there is no need for forensic evidence to know about the mastermind of this murder plot, Over three decades ago, then Supreme Leader Khomeini issued a fatwa to kill Rushdie, and senior Iranian regime officials have repeatedly endorsed it and even offered multi-million dollars bounties for his life.’

Rushdie is on a ventilator and may lose an eye after he was stabbed on stage in New York state. The writer, whose writing led to death threats from Iran in the 1980s, was about to deliver a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution, in Chautauqua some 65 miles south-west of Buffalo, when he was stabbed multiple times, sustaining nerve damage to his arm and damage to his liver, according to the New York Times.

He was stabbed at least once in the neck and once in the abdomen, according to police officials, before he was taken to hospital.

According to the NYT Sir Salman’s agent Andrew Wylie said he is on a ventilator and unable to speak.

Mr Wylie added the news was ‘not good’ and the author will ‘likely lose one eye’. He said the nerves in Sir Salman’s arm were severed in the attack and his liver was ‘stabbed and damaged’.

Major Eugene Staniszweski of New York State Police said late on Friday: ‘Earlier today at approximately 10.47am, guest speaker Salman Rushdie, aged 75, and Ralph Henry Reese, age 73, had just arrived on stage at the institution.

‘Shortly thereafter, the suspect jumped on to the stage and attacked Mr Rushdie, stabbing him at least once in the neck and at least once in the abdomen.

‘Several members of the staff at the institution and audience members rushed the suspect and took him to the ground, and shortly thereafter, a trooper who was at the institution took the suspect into custody with the assistance of a Chautauqua County Sheriff’s deputy.

‘Mr Rushdie was provided medical treatment by a doctor who was in the audience until EMS arrived on scene.

‘Mr Rushdie was airlifted to a local trauma centre and is still currently undergoing surgery.’

Photos from the Associated Press news agency showed Sir Salman lying on his back with his legs in the air and a first responder crouched over him.

His book The Satanic Verses has been banned in Iran since 1988, as many Muslims view it as blasphemous, and its publication prompted Iran’s then-leader Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa calling for his death.

Mr Reese, from the City of Asylum organisation, a residency programme for writers living in exile under threat of persecution, suffered a minor head injury.

They were due to discuss America’s role as an asylum for writers and other artists in exile and as a home for freedom of creative expression.

A video posted to Twitter by an AP reporter in the audience showed a man dressed in black being led away from the stage.

New York governor Kathy Hochul told a press conference that a state police officer saved Sir Salman’s life.

She added: ‘He is alive, he has been airlifted to safety. But here is an individual who has spent decades speaking truth to power, someone who’s been out there unafraid, despite the threats that have followed him his entire adult life.’

The Chautauqua Institution, which was hosting the lecture, tweeted about the incident, writing: ‘We ask for your prayers for Salman Rushdie and Henry Reese, and patience as we fully focus on co-ordinating with police officials following a tragic incident at the amphitheatre today.’

Its president Michael Hill said: ‘What we experienced at Chautauqua today is an incident unlike anything in our nearly 150-year history.

‘We were founded to bring people together and community to learn and in doing so, to create solutions through action, to develop empathy and to take on intractable problems. Today now we’re called to take on fear and the worst of all human traits – hate.’

Jeremy Genovese, 68, from Beachwood, Ohio, a retired academic from Cleveland State University, told the PA news agency he arrived at the amphitheatre as it was being evacuated and people were ‘streaming out’.

He said: ‘People were in shock, many people in tears. Chautauqua has always prided itself as a place where people can engage in civil dialogue.

‘The amphitheatre is a large outdoor venue where people have given lectures since the late 1800s. You need a pass to access the grounds but it is not too difficult to get in.’

Sir Salman’s publisher Penguin Random House said they are ‘deeply shocked and appalled’ by the incident.

Chief executive Markus Dohle said in a statement to PA: ‘We are deeply shocked and appalled to hear of the attack on Salman Rushdie while he was speaking at the Chautauqua Institution in New York.

‘We condemn this violent public assault, and our thoughts are with Salman and his family at this distressing time.’ 

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was ‘appalled that Sir Salman Rushdie has been stabbed while exercising a right we should never cease to defend’.

He added: ‘Right now my thoughts are with his loved ones. We are all hoping he is okay.’

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said: ‘Today, the country and the world witnessed a reprehensible attack against the writer Salman Rushdie. This act of violence is appalling.

‘All of us in the Biden-Harris Administration are praying for his speedy recovery. We are thankful to good citizens and first responders for helping Mr Rushdie so quickly after the attack and to law enforcement for its swift and effective work, which is ongoing.’

Sir Salman was previously president of PEN America, which celebrates free expression and speech, and its chief executive Suzanne Nossel was among those reacting to the attack.

She tweeted: ‘PEN America is reeling from shock and horror at word of a brutal, premeditated attack on our former president and stalwart ally, Salman Rushdie.’

She added: ‘Our thoughts and passions now lie with our dauntless Salman, wishing him a full and speedy recovery. We hope and believe fervently that his essential voice cannot and will not be silenced.’

Sir Salman began his writing career in the early 1970s with two unsuccessful books before Midnight’s Children, about the birth of India, which won the Booker Prize in 1981.

It went on to bring him worldwide fame and was named ‘best of the Bookers’ on the literary award’s 25th anniversary.

The author lived in hiding for many years in London under a British government protection programme after Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for his death over The Satanic Verses.

Finally, in 1998, the Iranian government withdrew its support for the death sentence and Sir Salman gradually returned to public life, even appearing as himself in the 2001 hit film Bridget Jones’s Diary.

The Index on Censorship, an organisation promoting free expression, said money was raised to boost the reward for Sir Salman’s killing as recently as 2016, underscoring that the fatwa for his death still stands.

His other works include The Moor’s Last Sigh and Shalimar The Clown, which was long-listed for the Booker.

He was knighted in 2008 and earlier this year was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour as part of the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

How Salman Rushdie lived under the shadow of a fatwa for 30 years: British author went into hiding when Iran’s spiritual leader ordered he was killed for ‘blasphemous’ The Satanic Verses but he was living a ‘normal life’ in New York before his stabbing

He was first forced into hiding more than 30 years ago by Iran’s theocratic dictatorship after the regime branded The Satanic Verses a work of blasphemy.

From ever-changing safe houses, constant armed guards and a new identity, to finally finding a new home in the US, British author Salman Rushdie has now been stabbed in the neck on stage in New York – the supposed beating heart of free speech.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Supreme Leader of the Islamic republic, issued a fatwa – or religious ruling – calling on all Muslims to murder the celebrated atheist author and anyone involved in the publication of The Satanic Verses on February 14, 1989.

Rushdie, now 75, was forced to live under the long shadow the fatwa cast until it was finally lifted by Iran’s hardline regime in 1998.

But for nine years, the writer constantly moved between safe houses and was protected by round-the-clock armed guards. He even adopted an alias, Joseph Anton – a combination of the first names of two of his favourite writers, Conrad and Chekhov. 

The fatwa also led to the murder of the book’s Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi, the targeting of its translators and publishers in Turkey, Norway and Italy, and worldwide riots and book-burnings – while The Satanic Verses itself was banned in many countries. 

Speaking about the controversy with the Mail, Sir Salman said: ‘Being under the fatwa was a jail, but I think that one of the problems is that from the outside it looked glamorous, as I sometimes showed up in places in Jags with people jumping out to open the door and make sure you get in safely and so on. Looks of who the hell does he think he is? Well, from my side it felt like jail.

‘There was this crude argument that I did it in some way for personal advantage, to make myself more famous or to make money. At its most unpleasant it was levelled at me from the Islamic side that the Jews made me do it. They said my [second] wife was Jewish. She wasn’t, she was American.

‘If I had simply wanted to trade on an insult to Islam I could have done it in a sentence rather than writing a 250,000-word novel, a work of fiction.’

‘What you have to remember is that The Satanic Verses is not called Islam the Prophet, it is not called Mohammed, the country is not called Arabia – it all happens in the dream of somebody who is losing their mind.’

What shocked him is that no radical Muslims in Britain who backed the call for his assassination were ever prosecuted.

He said: ‘There were these occasions, like in Manchester, where Muslim leaders said to their congregation, ”Tell me who in this audience would be ready to kill Rushdie?” and everyone in the audience raised their hand. And the police thought this was OK.

‘Supposing I had been the Queen and an imam said to his congregation, ”Who would be ready to kill the Queen?” and everybody raised their hand. Would you think the police would not act?

‘I only use the Queen as an example to dramatise this but it seems odd that when it is a novelist of foreign origin, therefore not completely British in some way, that it was allowed to happen with impunity.’

Rushdie remembers his split from his wife Marianne as being a particularly traumatic time. She claimed that the CIA was aware of Rushdie’s whereabouts and so his cover was blown. When he realised that she was lying he decided to end the relationship.

‘It was very shocking. There simply was a point at which I had to choose whether to be alone in the middle of this hurricane with nobody there for companionship or whether I somehow had to put up with this person in whom it was difficult to have faith.

‘It was horrifying to be told by a policeman that they believed that your wife was lying to you. It is an experience most of us don’t have. 

‘And then for her to say that it was the police who were to be blamed and that I shouldn’t trust them sets a kind of mindf*** and I had to make my judgments. It became impossible for me to have faith in her veracity. So in the end I thought it was better to separate.’

In an interview three years ago, he said: ‘Islam was not a thing. No one was thinking in that way. One of the things that has happened is that people in the West are more informed than they used to be’. 

He ruefully added: ‘I was 41 back then, now I am 71. Things are fine now. We live in a world where the subject changes very fast. And this is a very old subject. There are now many other things to be frightened about – and other people to kill’.

Sir Salman began his writing career in the early 1970s with two unsuccessful books before Midnight’s Children, about the birth of India, which won the Booker Prize in 1981. 

It went on to bring him worldwide fame, with it also later crowned the ‘best of the Bookers’ on the literary award’s 25th anniversary.

His other works include the Moor’s Last Sight and Shalimar The Clown, which was long-listed for the Booker, and he also published a memoir called Joseph Anton about the fatwa.

Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature, a decision that triggered outrage in several Muslim countries, including Malaysia and Pakistan. 

In 2017, he risked angering Islamists again by saying he could not face reading the ‘unenjoyable’ Koran.

Asked if Islam’s central text should be edited to make the religion seem ‘more humane’, the author replied: ‘Editing the Koran seems like a mug’s game. It’s not a very enjoyable book because most of it is not narrative. The big difference between the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Koran is that the Koran has the least narrative of them. Only about a quarter of the book is stories. A third of the book is fulminations against the unbeliever and how they will rot in hell. Another third of the book is laws, how you should behave.

‘So no I wouldn’t edit it because then I’d have to read it, and I don’t want to do that.’