Author Salman Rushdie was stabbed in the neck and abdomen, on stage, before a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution, New York.

The assailant was identified as Hadi Matar and has been apprehended by authorities. Rushdie, meanwhile, was tended to by a doctor at the event and flown to a hospital to receive medical treatment. The 75-year-old’s 1988 book The Satanic Verses angered the Muslim community and in 1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against the writer. 

While Matar’s motives haven’t been declared by the authorities, his now-defunct Facebook profile showed support for Khomeini. After the issuance of the fatwa, Rushdie’s Japanese translator was killed and his Italian translator was stabbed in 1991. Two years later, 37 people were killed in a hotel arson targeting Rushdie’s Turkish translator. 

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The Iranian government, in 1998, announced that it wouldn’t carry out the fatwa, but in 2005 again, Khomeini’s successor – Ali Khamenei – said that killing Rushdie would be authorized by Islam. In 2016, a $2.8 million bounty was placed on his head and in 2017, Khomeini’s official website said that the fatwa was still in effect as well. 

His office’s Twitter handle supported the fact in 2019, after which the social media platform limited the account’s reach. 

Ever since the fatwa was issued, the Booker Prize winner has been living life dangerously. The closest the Mumbai-born author came to being killed was on August 3, 1989, when an assailant carried a book bomb, which exploded prematurely, leading to the first Rushdie martyr. 

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Lebanon’s Hezbollah increased the stakes with leader Hassan Nasrallah saying, “I am sure there are millions of Muslims who are ready to give their lives to defend our prophet’s honour, and we have to be ready to do anything for that.” 

Matar, the assailant who stabbed Rushdie, was carrying a fake driver’s license with the surname the same as the Hezbollah second-in-command.