Everything About the Stabbing of Salman Rushdie, a Novelist Who Used to be in Hiding

How does a writer end up with a bounty on his head?

Well, by writing a book that insults Islam, apparently.

Here’s everything you need to know about Salman Rushdie and the recent attempt on his life.

Who Is Salman Rushdie?

Salman Rushdie, 75, has been stabbed at a public event, 33 years after the Iranian government called for Rushdie to be assassinated.

To understand why Rushdie has a price on his head, we must first understand who he is. Born in India to atheist parents, Rushdie became a British citizen after studying History at Kings College in Cambridge.

He has written many novels throughout the years, with his second novel Midnight’s Children selling half a million copies and winning the 1981 Booker Prize.

However, it was the publishing of his fifth book, The Satanic Verses, in 1988 that his life began to become endangered.

Why Was The Satanic Verses So Controversial?

Yeah, I think you can already tell that the book is going to be controversial based on the title alone.

The title of the book referred to two verses removed by the prophet Mohammed from the religious text of Islam, the Quran. Those verses, which allow prayers to three pagan goddesses, were said to be inspired by the devil, as Islam strictly believes that there is only one God.

In the book, Rushdie writes about a prophet that is tricked into striking a deal with Satan. Muslims were outraged, as they felt that he was depicting their founder, prophet Mohammed, irreverently.

Amongst other things, Muslims were also appalled by the usage of Mohammed’s wives’ names for two of the prostitutes in the book.

The book has been banned in India and other majority-Muslim countries.

Fatwa Calling For The Assassination of Rushdie

A few months after The Satanic Verses was published, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran’s supreme leader, issued a fatwa. A fatwa is a legal decree by a religious leader, and it called upon Muslims to kill Rushdie and those involved in the book’s publication.

The reasoning? By using Rushdie as an example, no one will dare to offend the sacred values of Islam in the future.

This also spurred Iranian organisations to raise a bounty worth millions of USD for Rushdie’s death.

This then led Rushdie to go into hiding for almost a decade till 1991.

In 1998, Iran’s reformist president Mohammad Khatami assured Britain that Iran will no longer support the fatwa. However, Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said as recently as 2019 that the fatwa still stands.

The Stabbing

On 12 August 2022, Rushdie was at western New York’s Chautauqua Institution. He was there for a discussion about the US acting as a home for creative freedom and giving asylum to exiled artists.

BTW, he became a US citizen in 2016, and lives in New York City.

In front of hundreds of audience members, a man rushed up the stage and stabbed the novelist repeatedly, causing Rushdie to fall to the ground.

Audience members wrestled the man away from Rushdie, while a New York State Police trooper providing event security arrested him. Meanwhile, a doctor in the audience attended to Rushdie before emergency services arrived and sent him to the hospital.

The suspect was identified as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old man from New Jersey. He had bought a pass to the event, and investigations showed that the staff merely checked passes for admissions without additional security checks.

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Severed Nerves in Arm, Likely Lose One Eye

According to Andrew Wylie, Rushdie’s book agent, Rushdie was on a ventilator and unable to speak after hours of surgery.

It was revealed that the nerves in Rushdie’s arm were severed, and his liver was stabbed and damaged. He will also likely lose an eye.

Not The First Serious (or Fatal) Incident Over This Book

Back in July 1991, the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses, Hitoshi Igarashi, was found stabbed and bled out in the hallway outside his office at Tokyo’s Tsukuba University.

In the same month, the book’s Italian translator, Ettore Capriolo, was stabbed in his Milan apartment. He managed to survive the attack.

A more extreme case happened in 1993, where Islamist protestors set fire to a hotel in Sivas, central Turkey, where Turkish translator Aziz Nesin was staying. Nesin managed to escape, but 37 other innocents were killed.

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Featured Image: salmanrushdie.com