By Nasser Karimi and Jon Gambrell | Related Press
TEHRAN, Iran — Iranians reacted with reward and fear Saturday over the assault on novelist Salman Rushdie, the goal of a decades-old fatwa by the late Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini calling for his dying.
It stays unclear why Rushdie’s attacker, recognized by police as Hadi Matar of Fairview, New Jersey, stabbed the creator as he ready to talk at an occasion Friday in western New York. Iran’s theocratic authorities and its state-run media have assigned no motive to the assault.
However in Tehran, some prepared to talk to The Related Press provided reward for an assault concentrating on a author they consider tarnished the Islamic religion along with his 1988 e-book “The Satanic Verses.” Within the streets of Iran’s capital, photographs of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini nonetheless peer down at passers-by.
“I don’t know Salman Rushdie, however I'm blissful to listen to that he was attacked since he insulted Islam,” mentioned Reza Amiri, a 27-year-old deliveryman. “That is the destiny for anyone who insults sanctities.”
Others, nevertheless, frightened aloud that Iran may turn into much more reduce off from the world as tensions stay excessive over its tattered nuclear deal.
“I really feel those that did it try to isolate Iran,” mentioned Mahshid Barati, a 39-year-old geography trainer. “This can negatively have an effect on relations with many — even Russia and China.”
Khomeini, ill within the final 12 months of his life after the grinding, stalemate Nineteen Eighties Iran-Iraq struggle decimated the nation’s economic system, issued the fatwa on Rushdie in 1989. The Islamic edict got here amid a violent uproar within the Muslim world over the novel, which some seen as blasphemously making strategies in regards to the Prophet Muhammad’s life.
“I wish to inform all of the intrepid Muslims on the earth that the creator of the e-book entitled ‘Satanic Verses’ … in addition to these publishers who have been conscious of its contents, are hereby sentenced to dying,” Khomeini mentioned in February 1989, in response to Tehran Radio.
He added: “Whoever is killed doing this will probably be considered a martyr and can go on to heaven.”
Early on Saturday, Iranian state media made some extent to notice one man recognized as being killed whereas attempting to hold out the fatwa. Lebanese nationwide Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh died when a e-book bomb he had prematurely exploded in a London lodge on Aug. 3, 1989, simply over 33 years in the past.
Matar, the person who attacked Rushdie on Friday, was born in the US to Lebanese dad and mom who emigrated from the southern village of Yaroun, the city’s mayor Ali Tehfe advised the AP.
Yaroun sits solely kilometers (miles) away from Israel. Previously, the Israeli navy has fired on what it described as positions of the Iran-backed Shiite militia Hezbollah round that space.
At newsstands Saturday, front-page headlines provided their very own takes on the assault. The hard-line Vatan-e Emrouz’s important story coated what it described as: “A knife within the neck of Salman Rushdie.” The reformist newspaper Etemad’s headline requested: “Salman Rushdie close to dying?”
The conservative newspaper Khorasan bore a big picture of Rushdie on a stretcher, its headline blaring: “Devil on the trail to hell.”
However the fifteenth Khordad Basis — which put the over $3 million bounty on Rushdie — remained quiet at first of the working week. Staffers there declined to right away remark to the AP, referring inquiries to an official not within the workplace.
The inspiration, whose title refers back to the 1963 protests in opposition to Iran’s former shah by Khomeini’s supporters, usually focuses on offering assist to the disabled and others affected by struggle. But it surely, like different foundations often known as “bonyads” in Iran funded partially by confiscated belongings from the shah’s time, typically serve the political pursuits of the nation’s hard-liners.
Reformists in Iran, those that need to slowly liberalize the nation’s Shiite theocracy from inside and have higher relations with the West, have sought to distance the nation’s authorities from the edict. Notably, reformist President Mohammad Khatami’s international minister in 1998 mentioned that the “authorities disassociates itself from any reward which has been provided on this regard and doesn't assist it.”
Rushdie slowly started to re-emerge into public life round that point. However some in Iran have by no means forgotten the fatwa in opposition to him.
On Saturday, Mohammad Mahdi Movaghar, a 34-year-old Tehran resident, described having a “good feeling” after seeing Rushdie attacked.
“That is pleasing and exhibits those that insult the sacred issues of we Muslims, along with punishment within the hereafter, will get punished on this world too by the hands of individuals,” he mentioned.
Others, nevertheless, frightened the assault — no matter why it was carried out — may damage Iran because it tries to barter over its nuclear take care of world powers.
Since then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, Tehran has seen its rial forex plummet and its economic system crater. In the meantime, Tehran enriches uranium now nearer than ever to weapons-grade ranges amid a collection of assaults throughout the Mideast.
“It'll make Iran extra remoted,” warned former Iranian diplomat Mashallah Sefatzadeh.
Whereas fatwas could be revised or revoked, Iran’s present Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who took over after Khomeini has by no means achieved so.
“The choice made about Salman Rushdie continues to be legitimate,” Khamenei mentioned in 1989. “As I've already mentioned, it is a bullet for which there's a goal. It has been shot. It'll in the future ultimately hit the goal.”
As lately as February 2017, Khamenei tersely answered this query posed to him: “Is the fatwa on the apostasy of the cursed liar Salman Rushdie nonetheless in impact? What's a Muslim’s responsibility on this regard?”
Khamenei responded: “The decree is as Imam Khomeini issued.”
Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Related Press journalists Mehdi Fattahi in Tehran, Iran, and Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed to this report.