CHAUTAUQUA, N.Y. (AP) – Salman Rushdie, the author whose writing drew death threats from Iran’s leader in the 1980s, was attacked and apparently stabbed in the neck by a man who rushed the stage as he prepared to deliver a lecture at Western. New York.
A bloodied Rushdie, 75, was taken to hospital. His condition was not immediately known. His agent, Andrew Wylie, said the writer was undergoing surgery but had no further details.
An Associated Press reporter saw a man confront Rushdie on stage at the Chautauqua Foundation and punch or stab him 10 to 15 times as he was introduced. The writer was pushed or fell to the floor and the man was arrested.
Authorities did not immediately identify the assailant or offer information about his motive.
State police said Rushdie was apparently stabbed in the neck. Gov. Kathy Hochul later said he was alive and “getting the care he needs.”
Dr Martin Haskell, a doctor who was among those who rushed to help, described Rushdie’s injuries as “serious but recoverable”.
Event coordinator Henry Rees, co-founder of an organization that offers housing to writers facing persecution, was also attacked and suffered a minor head injury, police said. He and Rushdie were to discuss the United States as a haven for writers and other artists in exile.
Police said a state trooper was assigned to Rushdie’s lecture and made the arrest. But after the attack, some longtime visitors to the center questioned why there wasn’t tighter security for the event, given decades of threats against Rushdie and a bounty on his head that offers more than $3 million for anyone who kills him.
Rabbi Charles Savenor was among the approximately 2,500 people in the audience. Amid fumes, the spectators were ushered out of the outdoor amphitheater.
The assailant ran onto the platform “and started beating Mr. Rushdie. At first you say “What’s going on?” And then it became clear within seconds that he was beaten,” Savenor said. He said the attack lasted about 20 seconds.
Another onlooker, Kathleen Jones, said the attacker was dressed in black, wearing a black mask.
“We thought maybe it was part of a ploy to show that there is still a lot of controversy surrounding this author. But it became apparent within seconds” that it wasn’t, he said.
Rushdie was a prominent spokesman for free speech and liberal causes. He is a former president of PEN America, which said it was “crazy with shock and horror” at the attack.
“We can think of no comparable incident of a public violent attack on a literary author on American soil,” CEO Suzanne Nossel said in a statement.
Rushdie’s 1988 novel The Satanic Verses was considered blasphemous by many Muslims, who saw one character as an insult to the prophet Muhammad, among other objections. Across the Muslim world, violent protests often erupted against Rushdie, who was born in India to a Muslim family.
At least 45 people were killed in riots over the book, including 12 in Rushdie’s hometown of Mumbai. In 1991, a Japanese translator of the book was stabbed to death and an Italian translator survived a knife attack. In 1993, the book’s Norwegian publisher was shot three times and survived.
The book was banned in Iran, where the late leader Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a 1989 fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death. Khomeini died the same year.
Iran’s current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has never issued a fatwa to withdraw the decree, although Iran in recent years has not focused on the author.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday’s attack, which led to a nightly newscast on Iranian state television.
Threats to his life and a reward led Rushdie to go into hiding under a British government protection scheme, which included a 24-hour armed guard. Rushdie emerged after nine years in seclusion and cautiously resumed more public appearances, maintaining his outspoken criticism of religious extremism overall.
He said in a 2012 speech in New York that terrorism is really the art of fear.
“The only way to beat it is to decide not to be afraid,” he said.
Anti-Rushdi sentiment has lingered long after Khomeini’s decree. The Index on Censorship, an organization that promotes free expression, said money was raised to boost the reward for his killing as recently as 2016.
An Associated Press reporter who went to the office of the 15 Khordad Foundation in Tehran, which provided the millions for Rushdie’s prize, found it closed on Friday night during Iran’s weekend. No one answered calls to his listed phone number.
In 2012, Rushdie published the memoir ‘Joseph Anton’, about the fatwa. The title came from the pseudonym Rushdie had used while in hiding.
Rushdie rose to fame with his Booker Prize-winning 1981 novel ‘Midnight’s Children’, but his name became known around the world after ‘The Satanic Verses’.
Widely regarded as one of Britain’s greatest living writers, Rushdie was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2008 and earlier this year made a Fellow of the Order of Honour, a royal honor for people who have made significant contributions to the arts, science or public life.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted that he was “appalled” that Rushdie was stabbed “while exercising a right we must never stop defending”.
The Chautauqua Foundation, about 55 miles southwest of Buffalo in a rural corner of New York, has served for more than a century as a place of reflection and spiritual guidance. Guests do not pass through metal detectors and do not undergo a baggage check. Most people leave the doors of their centuries-old homes unlocked at night.
The Chautauqua Center is known for its summer lecture series, where Rushdie has spoken in the past.
Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz and Hillel Italie in New York. Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, New York. Michael Hill in Albany, New York. and Nasser Karimi and Mehdi Fattahi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
