Salman Rushdie Stabbed in Neck While Onstage Lecturing in New York
thewrap.comSalman Rushdie was attacked while lecturing Friday in New York, where he was stabbed in the neck by an unnamed man who rushed the stage.
Rushdie, 75, was quickly airlifted from Western New York’s Chautauqua Institution, where he had been due to speak. Gov. Kathy Hochul has since updated press on the author’s condition, confirming that he is alive and safe.
The identity of the perpetrator has not yet been made public, but he was apprehended and taken into custody, per New York police.“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, it seems,” Hochul said before commending the state police officer who “stood up and saved his life, protected him.”The Booker Prize–winning author of 1981’s “Midnight’s Children,” Rushdie is best known for his controversial 1988 work “The Satanic Verses.” Viewed as blasphemous by many Muslims for its depiction of the prophet Muhammad, that book led to varied death threats and vitriol in the Muslim world.
Under the late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian government went so far as to issue a 1989 fatwā calling for his death.
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