Police said Rushdie, 75, suffered an apparent stab wound to the neck and was airlifted to hospital. “His condition is not yet known,” they said. Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Whaley, said the writer was alive and undergoing surgery, Reuters reported. The author was scheduled to speak at the Chautauqua Foundation, about a 90-minute drive southwest of Buffalo in western New York state, on Friday. “Around 11 a.m., a male suspect came on stage and attacked Rushdie and an interviewer,” New York State Police said in a statement. The suspect was taken into custody by a state trooper assigned to the event, police said. No additional information was available about the shooter. The Chautauqua Foundation said Rushdie was at the event for a discussion about the US “as an asylum for writers and other artists in exile and a home for freedom of creative expression”. He was joined on the scene by Henry Rees, co-founder of a Pittsburgh-based group that hosts writers living in exile, who police said suffered a minor head injury. Salman Rushdie is loaded into a medical evacuation helicopter after the attack © Horatio Gates/AFP/Getty Images Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses, first published in 1988, caused controversy for its portrayal of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The book was banned in Iran, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie in 1989. After the death threat, Rushdie went into hiding. He lived with armed guards and adopted the pseudonym Joseph Anton. Twitter temporarily banned Iran’s current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in 2019 for tweeting that Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Rushdie was “firm and irrevocable.”

The site where Rushdie was attacked opened in 1874 as a teaching place for Methodist Sunday teachers, before becoming the center of a wider educational movement. It is known for its summer program, which hosts well-known authors, musicians and religious leaders, as well as bringing together a variety of religious faiths. A Chautauqua representative could not be reached for comment Friday. “It happened in a place that is very familiar to me,” said New York Gov. Kathy Hotchul. “This is a perfect place for him to be able to talk and that’s what he was trying to do, just in the last hour before he was attacked.” The governor, who is originally from western New York, said she would provide more information on the identity of the attacker and that a case would be filed.