According to British media news, on August 12, local time, the 75-year-old Indian-British writer Salman Rushdie was attacked at a public event in New York State, USA, and has been sent to the helicopter by helicopter. A hospital in Pennsylvania. Rushdie is now on a ventilator, unable to speak, has a nerve cut in his arm, stab wounds to his neck and liver, and could lose an eye, his agent said.
At 5 pm local time on August 12, the New York State Police held a press conference on the matter. According to the police, the perpetrator is named Hadi Matar, 24 years old this year, from the town of Fairview, New Jersey. The motive for the crime is still unclear and further investigation is needed. After the attack, a doctor in the audience immediately gave Rushdie first aid, police said. At the end of the press conference, police said the charge against Mata would depend on Rushdie’s state, who is still undergoing surgery.
Born in Mumbai, India, Rushdie moved to the UK at the age of 14, graduating with an honours degree in History from King’s College, Cambridge. In 1981, he became famous for his novel “Midnight’s Children” and won the prestigious British literary award “Booker Prize”. However, his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, published in 1988, caused his death and caused an unprecedented international upheaval.
Rushdie was born into a Muslim family, but he did not believe in gods since he was a child. After becoming a British citizen, he publicly renounced his religious beliefs. The surrealist novel “The Satanic Verses” has sparked outrage among some Muslims, who say it contains “blasphemous” content against Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. Although the novel has been well received in European and American literary circles and won the Whitbread Prize for Fiction, India took the lead in banning “The Satanic Verses” domestically, and Pakistan, South Africa and other Muslim countries have followed suit.
A protester holds a sign saying “Rushdie should be hanged” in Mumbai, India, 2004
Protests against the book and Rushdie himself have intensified in the Muslim community over time. In January 1989, Muslims in Bradford, England, symbolically burned a copy of The Satanic Verses, and British booksellers WHSmith removed it from its display case. Rushdie himself has publicly apologized to the Muslim world, but has refused to admit to the “blasphemy” charges.
In February 1989, someone was killed during anti-Rushdie riots in India, and the British embassy in Iran was stoned. Subsequently, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader at the time, issued a “fatwa” (a fatwa, a type of fatwa ordered by an Islamic religious leader) calling for the novelist’s assassination. decree) and a $3 million reward. To this end, Britain and Iran severed diplomatic relations, and many intellectuals in the Western world condemned the Muslim response.
Meanwhile, in addition to Rushdie himself, many people associated with him have received death threats. In January 1991, the Italian translation of The Satanic Verses was stabbed in Milan but survived; the same month, the Japanese translation of the book was stabbed at the University of Tsukuba in Tokyo.
Since 1998, the Iranian government has announced that it will no longer officially support the “death sentence” of Rushdi, but the fatwa issued by Khomeini has never been officially removed. After Rushdie moved to the United States, he hid for many years and lived an “underground life” protected by the police. Since the publication of The Satanic Verses, he has continued to write novels. In 2007, he was knighted by the Queen of England for his literary achievements. “list, ranked 13th.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted after Sunday’s assassination that he was “appalled” by “Sir Rushdie being stabbed while exercising our staunchly defended right (freedom of speech)”. French President Emmanuel Macron also tweeted that Rushdie’s assassination was “a struggle between freedom and ignorance” and that he “was a victim of hatred and cowardly attacks by barbaric forces.”
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