CHAUTAUQUA, N.Y. (AP) — Salman Rushdie, the writer whose writing led to demise threats from Iran within the Eighties, was attacked Friday as he was about to offer a lecture in western New York.
An Related Press reporter noticed a person storm the stage on the Chautauqua Establishment and start punching or stabbing Rushdie as he was being launched. The writer fell to the ground, and the person was restrained.
Rushdie’s situation was not instantly identified.
Rushdie’s ebook “The Satanic Verses” has been banned in Iran since 1988, as many Muslims think about it to be blasphemous. A yr later, Iran’s late chief Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s demise. A bounty of over $3 million has additionally been provided for anybody who kills Rushdie.
For 9 years after the fatwa was introduced, Rushdie lived in hiding and below police safety. Throughout that point, the novel’s Norwegian writer was shot thrice on an Oslo road. Rushdie continued to make use of an assumed title in public till 2001.
Iran’s authorities has lengthy since distanced itself from Khomeini’s decree, however anti-Rushdie sentiment lingered. In 2012, a semi-official Iranian spiritual basis raised the bounty for Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million.
Rushdie dismissed that risk on the time, saying there was “no proof” of individuals being within the reward.
That yr, Rushdie printed a memoir, “Joseph Anton,” concerning the fatwa.
Rushdie, 75, was born in India; he turned a British citizen in 1964 and a U.S. citizen in 2016.
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