An official with the Iranian-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah said on Saturday that he had no additional information about the stabbing. “We don’t know anything about this matter, so we won’t comment,” the official told Reuters news agency on condition of anonymity. Hezbollah is backed by Iran, whose previous supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a religious edict in 1988 calling on Muslims to kill Rushdie for blasphemy over his book The Satanic Verses. He had a bounty on his head that offered more than $3 million to anyone who killed him. The suspected shooter was identified by police as Hadi Matar, 24, of New Jersey. On Saturday, he was charged with attempted murder and assault. Matar and his family are from the southern Lebanese town of Yaroun, said its mayor Ali Tehfe. Tehfe said Matar’s parents immigrated to the United States and Matar was born and raised there. When asked if Matar or his parents were affiliated with or supported Hezbollah, Tehfe said he had “no information at all” about the political views of the parents or Matar as they lived abroad.
‘glad to hear’
A bloodied Rushdie, 75, was airlifted to a hospital and underwent surgery late Friday. His agent, Andrew Wylie, said the writer was on a ventilator with a damaged liver, severed nerves in his arm and an eye he was likely to lose. Iran’s government has not officially commented on the attack. But in Iran’s capital, some who spoke to The Associated Press praised the attack on a writer they believe tarnished the Islamic faith with his 1988 book. On the streets of Tehran, images of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini still stare down passers-by. “I don’t know Salman Rushdie, but I’m glad to hear that he was attacked since he insulted Islam,” said Reza Amiri, a 27-year-old distributor. “This is the fate of anyone who insults the saints.” Mohammad Mahdi Movaghar, a 34-year-old resident of Tehran, described having a “good feeling” when he saw Rushdie being attacked. “This is pleasing and shows that those who insult the sacred things we Muslims, in addition to punishment in the hereafter, will also be punished in this world at the hands of men,” he said. Others, however, worry that Iran could become even more cut off from the world as tensions remain high over the scrappy 2015 nuclear deal. “I feel that those who did it are trying to isolate Iran,” said Mahshid Barati, a 39-year-old geography professor. “This will adversely affect relations with many – even Russia and China.” Since then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the nuclear deal in 2018, Tehran has seen its currency plummet and its economy shrink. Meanwhile, Iran has enriched uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels. “The [the attack] it will make Iran more isolated,” warned former Iranian diplomat Mashallah Sefatzadeh. An Iranian boy stands in front of a banner at the University of Tehran in 1989 that reads “Salman Rushdie’s death sentence will be carried out.” [File: Reuters]
“A Thousand Braves”
Several Iranian newspapers on Saturday praised the person who attacked and seriously injured Rushdie. The hard-line Kayhan newspaper, whose editor-in-chief is appointed by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wrote: “A thousand thumbs up… to the brave and conscientious person who attacked the renegade and evil Salman Rushdie in New York. The hand of the man who tore the throat of God’s enemy must be kissed.” Khomeini issued the decree against Rushdie in 1989. It came amid a violent uproar in the Muslim world over his novel, which some felt made blasphemous suggestions about the life of the Prophet Muhammad. While such decrees can be revised or revoked, Iran’s current supreme leader, who took power after Khomeini’s death, never did. Early on Saturday, Iranian state media reported that a man identified as having been killed while trying to carry out the decree. Lebanese national Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh died when a book bomb prematurely exploded in a London hotel on August 3, 1989, just 33 years ago. On the newsstands Saturday, headliners gave their own take on the attack. The hardline Vatan-e Emrouz’s lead story covered what it described as “A knife to Salman Rushdie’s throat”. The headline of the reformist newspaper Etemad asked: “Salman Rushdie in the neighborhood of death?”
“Incitement to violence”
Some US-based activist groups denounced the decades-old religious order, blaming it for the attack on Rushdie. “Whether or not today’s assassination attempt was ordered directly by Tehran, it is almost certainly the result of 30 years of inciting violence by the regime against this famous author,” said the Washington-based National Union for Democracy in Iran. The National Council of Resistance of Iran, an outlawed opposition group in Iran, said the attack took place at the “instigation” of Khomeini’s decree. “Ali Khamenei and other leaders of the clerical regime had always vowed to implement this anti-Islamic fatwa [decree] for the past 34 years,” she said in a statement. In an interview just weeks before he was stabbed and seriously injured, Rushdie said his life was now “relatively normal” after years of hiding because of death threats. The magazine interview was due to appear on August 18, but German magazine Stern published it on Saturday. Rushdie, who became a US citizen in 2016 and lives in New York, said he was concerned about threats to democracy in the US.
