In 1993, William Nygaard, the publisher of the Norwegian edition of The Satanic Verses, was severely wounded after being shot three times outside his home in Oslo. He said of the attack on Rushdie:

Rushdie has paid a high price. He is a leading author who has meant so much to literature, and he had found a good life in the United States.

In 1991, Hitoshi Igarashi, the scholar who translated Verses into Japanese was stabbed to death, his body found at the Tsukuba University campus, northeast of Tokyo.

In the same year, Ettore Capriolo, the translator of the Italian version, was attacked and stabbed in Milan, suffering knife wounds to his neck, chest, and hands.

Professor Carl LeVan was in the audience for Rushdie’s event at the Chautauqua Institution. He told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

I was sitting about 14 or 15 rows back from the stage, it’s a fairly large amphitheatre, here we call it the Amp. It seats a few thousand people and it’s a covered amphitheatre and I was just settling into my seat around 10.45am, a few minutes beforehand, we knew this was going to be a very popular event, he is a very well-known speaker, author, novelist and proponent of human rights.

One of the hosts for the event, one of the staff members of the Chautauqua Institution was describing the program and shortly after he started talking, a man rushed onto the stage and repeatedly and viciously stabbed Salman Rushdie. And there were just gaps of shock from the audience, we were all sitting down, many of us stood up. A few courageous and compassionate people went up the stage and it was just a really horrible act of intolerance and violence to witness.

Le Van said Rushdie’s attacker “was trying to stab him as many times as possible before he was subdued”, saying he believed the man “was trying to kill” the author.

It’s really difficult for those who of us who have been members of the Chautauqua community for some years because part of the mission of the Chautauqua movement when it started in the late 1800s in the United States was partly to embrace controversy as part of diversity. And so people come here with open minds and open hearts. They try to listen and learn and part of doing that is sometimes… arguing with each other.

So, to see that community pierced by someone who just had this level of intolerance and rage within himself does harm to Salman Rushdie, and we’re all very hoping for a speedy recovery for him, but it’s really just been devastating to the community.

British-Australian academic Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert spent 804 imprisoned by the Iranian regime on false charges of espionage. She is the author of a memoir of her incarceration, The Uncaged Sky.

PEN International has issued a statement on the attack on Sir Salman Rushdie.

Rushdie is a former president of PEN America.

PEN International is deeply shocked and appalled to learn that former PEN America President and renowned writer, Salman Rushdie, was attacked today just before giving a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. We utterly condemn the attack and wish him a prompt and full recovery.

Burhan Sonmez, PEN International’s President said:

PEN International utterly condemns the brutal attack on Salman Rushdie. Salman is an esteemed and celebrated author and beloved member of the PEN community, who has been facing threats for his work for years. No one should be targeted, let alone attacked, for peacefully expressing their views. We wish our dear friend a speedy recovery. Our thoughts are with him and his family.

More here.

Behrouz Boochani is an Iranian journalist and author in exile.

He is a former refugee who was held for six years in Australia’s illegal offshore detention regime in Papua New Guinea, writing of the experience in his award-winning book No Friend But the Mountains.

Who is Salman Rushdie? Author whose book The Satanic Verses made him a target

Rushdie is an Indian-born, British Booker prize-winning author. He has written 14 novels, but is best known for his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses. In 2007, Rushdie was knighted for his services to literature. He has been living in the US since 2000.

Why has his work led to death threats?

The Satanic Verses – inspired in part by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, garnered critical acclaim in the UK and won the Whitbread award for novel of the year in 1988

However, it also caused major controversy as some Muslims accused the text of blasphemy and of mocking Islam. It sparked a series of protests across the UK attended by thousands of British Muslims, many of which involved publicly burning the book.

A year later, Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini banned the book in Iran, and issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death.

Have there been previous attempts on Rushdie’s life?

There have been a number of failed assassination attempts on Rushdie, as well as attacks on translators of the text.

Read more:

The moderator of the event where author Salman Rushdie was speaking on Friday morning, who was also injured in the attack, has issued a statement.

Ralph Henry Reese called Rushdie “one of the great defenders of freedom of speech and freedom of creative expression”, in a statement to the New York Times. Reese was released from the hospital Friday after receiving a facial injury.

“The fact that this attack could occur in the United States is indicative of the threats to writers from many governments and from many individuals and organizations.”

Blood and terror: witnesses tell of attack on Salman Rushdie at literary festival

The Chautauqua summer arts festival in upstate New York is normally a calm and pleasant affair, drawing thousands of literary-minded people eager to commune with their favorite writers.

That changed dramatically on Friday, when the famed novelist Salman Rushdie, who had just walked on to a stage to give a lecture, was stabbed by a man wielding a knife – transforming the faculty-lounge atmosphere into a blood-spattered scene.

The shocking events unfolded in seconds and stunned onlookers.

Rushdie, who has been targeted for death over accusations that his prize-winning 1988 novel The Satanic Verses is blasphemous, was sitting in a chair on the stage as a panelist introduced him and his work. A man dressed in black rushed the stage and attacked Rushdie.

“I could just see his fists sort of pounding on Salman,” a witness, Bill Vasu, told the New York Times.

As members of the audience screamed, people ran to tackle the attacker and render aid to Rushdie, who had been apparently stabbed several times, including in the neck. Rushdie lay face up on the floor, as someone elevated his legs. He was “covered with blood and there was blood running down on to the floor” as people crouched over him saying, “He has a pulse, he has a pulse,” two other witnesses told the Times.

Full story:

What we know so far

Acclaimed author Salman Rushdie was stabbed while speaking at an event in New York on Friday. Here’s what we know so far:

• Rushdie, the author of 14 novels, was appearing at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York to speak about the importance of the US offering asylum for writers and other artists in exile.

• As he was being introduced to an audience of about 2,500 people, a man wearing a black mask stormed the stage and begin assaulting Rushdie, punching or stabbing him multiple times, according to witness accounts. Audience members rushed to help and apprehend the suspect before a state trooper at the event arrested him.

• The author was airlifted to a hospital and is undergoing surgery for his injuries, officials say, which include wounds to the neck and abdomen. Authorities have not released more information on his condition, though a doctor at the event described Rushdie’s wounds as “serious, but recoverable”. The event moderator was also attacked and suffered a facial injury.

• Police have identified the suspect as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old from New Jersey who purchased a ticket for the event. Authorities believe he was acting alone and have not yet found any indication of his motive.

• Visitors at the center raised questions about why there wasn’t tighter security for the event, the Associated Press reports, given Rushdie has faced threats for decades and a bounty of more than $3m offered for anyone who kills the author. The institution’s president said Friday that they worked with state and local police to provide event security.

New York police just named the suspect in the attack on Salman Rushdie as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old from New Jersey. He had access for the event where the author was speaking, and officials believe he was acting alone.

There were no previous threats before the event, authorities said, there is not yet any indication of the motive of Rushdie’s attacker.

Authorities are currently working to determine charges against Matar, police said in a press conference on Friday afternoon.

New York police identify suspect

Police in New York have identified a suspect in the stabbing of author Salman Rushdie.

Authorities say the man is 24 and from New Jersey. Audience members took the man down before police brought him into custody, police said.

Rushdie is still undergoing surgery for his injuries.

Writers and officials condemn attack

Authors, publishers and government officials around the world have expressed their shock over the attack on author Salman Rushdie.

Tony Blair, the former UK prime minister, said: “My thoughts are with Salman and all his family. A horrible and utterly unjustified attack on someone exercising their right to speak, to write and to be true to their convictions in their life and in their art.”

Khaled Hosseini, the author of The Kite Runner, said he was horrified by the incident.

Sergio Ramírez, one of Nicaragua’s most famous writers, also condemned the attack.

“The criminal attack on Salman Rushdie is an aggression against all literature. Fanaticism will never prevail over the power of literary creation. My most profound solidarity goes out to him,” tweeted the Cervantes Prize winning author.

William Nygaard, the Norwegian publisher who was shot in 1993 after publishing Rushdie’s worker said the author has paid a “high price”. “He is a leading author who has meant so much to literature, and he had found a good life in the United States,” he said.

Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, called the attack “shocking and appalling”. “It is an attack on freedom of speech and thought, which are two bedrock values of our country and of the Chautauqua Institution,” he said. “I hope Mr Rushdie quickly and fully recovers and the perpetrator experiences full accountability and justice.”

Priti Patel, the UK home secretary, described the attack as “unprovoked and senseless”.

Here’s video of first responders transporting Rushdie to the hospital after he was attacked in New York.

Here’s another piece on the impact of Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, 30 years after its publishing, from Kenan Malik for the Guardian:

Sometimes, you just have to shake your head to clear it and look again. Did he really write that? So it was when I read a review in the Independent by Sean O’Grady of The Satanic Verses: 30 Years On, a BBC documentary on the Rushdie affair and its legacy.

But, yes, in the last paragraph, he really wrote: “Rushdie’s silly, childish book should be banned under today’s anti-hate legislation. It’s no better than racist graffiti on a bus stop. I wouldn’t have it in my house, out of respect to Muslim people and contempt for Rushdie, and because it sounds quite boring. I’d be quite inclined to burn it, in fact.”

Even in today’s censorious, don’t-give-offence climate, there is something startling in the casualness with which the associate editor of a national newspaper can proudly proclaim himself a would-be book-burner and book-banner…

Read the full article here.

Eye witnesses who were at Friday’s planned lecture have spoken publicly about the moment Rushdie was stabbed.

Here is a video with interviews of several people who were at the talk, from Capital Tonight reporter Ryan Whalen:

Here is more on the ongoing controversy surrounding Rushdie’s book, the Satanic Verses, from the Guardian’s Julian Borger:

When Salman Rushdie wrote his novel The Satanic Verses in September 1988, he thought its many references to Islam might cause some ripples.

“I expected a few mullahs would be offended, call me names, and then I could defend myself in public,” Rushdie would tell an interviewer much later.

The Indian-born author had come from a career as an advertising copywriter, confecting slogans such as “naughty but nice” for cream cakes, for example. He had no idea of the tsunami of outrage that was to overshadow the rest of his life, or that he was about to become a geopolitical booby trap.

By October 1988, he already needed a bodyguard in the face of a deluge of death threats, cancelling trips and hunkering down. One Muslim-majority country after another banned the book, and in December thousands of Muslims demonstrated in Bolton, Greater Manchester, and burned a pile of the books. In Islamabad, six people were killed in a mob attack on the US cultural centre in the Pakistani capital to protest against the book. There were riots in Srinagar and Kashmir.

The day after those riots, 14 February 1989, the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a religious decree, a fatwa, calling on all Muslims to execute not just Rushdie but everyone involved in the book’s publication. The fatwa effectively carved the death threat into stone, making it impossible to erase. An Iranian religious foundation offered a $1m bounty, $3m if an Iranian carried out the killing. Iran broke off relations with Britain over the issue…

Read the full article here.

Salman Rushdie’s book, the Satanic Verses, is one of his most well-known works and the fourth book by the critically acclaimed author.

In 1989, a year after the book was banned in Iran, former Iranian Supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa instructing Muslims to kill Rushdie over alleged blasphemy in the book.

Here is a 2012 Guardian article with multiple accounts from authors, publishing insiders and friends of Rushdie, on the controversy surrounding the book and its impact on Rushdie at the time.

In other updates, Erie police chief Dan Spizarny confirmed that Rushdie is receiving treatment at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Hamot, with police from the Erie, Pennsylvania, police department acting as security.

From reporter Jon Harris:

Writer Ian McEwan, author of Atonement and other works, also commented on Rushdie’s attack, writing in an email to the Guardian:

This appalling attack on my dear friend Salman represents an assault
on freedom of thought and speech. These are the freedoms that underpin
all our rights and liberties. Salman has been an inspirational
defender of persecuted writers and journalists across the world. He
is a fiery and generous spirit, a man of immense talent and courage
and he will not be deterred.

The current president of PEN America also commented on today’s attack of Rushdie, calling the author “a tireless advocate for imperiled writers, for unfettered intellectual and creative exchange, and one of the last half-century’s great champions of freedom of expression.”

PEN America president Ayad Akhtar wrote, in a statement:

It is hard to find words to express the emotions occasioned by today’s shocking attack on Salman Rushdie. As a former President of our organization, Salman means so much to us…

But it is in his own truly seminal, challenging body of work that Salman has stood most powerfully for the values of PEN America — work that has questioned founding myths and expanded the world’s imaginative possibilities, at great cost to himself.

On a more personal note, as a writer whose own work is fundamentally shaped by an early encounter with The Satanic Verses, it is particularly horrifying to me that the nightmare set in motion by the fatwa in 1989 is still with us. We are thinking of Salman today across the PEN America community, and praying for his recovery.”

Read the full statement here.

Chautauqua Institution, the education center where Rushdie was speaking, released a statement on the incident via Twitter.

The institute’s account posted:

Henry Reese was the moderator for the planned conversation with Rushdie.

Reese suffered a minor head injury, according to an earlier statement from New York state police.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson said he was “appalled” at the stabbing of Rushdie in comments he made on today’s attack.

On Twitter, Johnson wrote:

Here is a timeline of Rushdie’s full career, broken down by the Guardian’s Tobi Thomas:

The article is also available here.

The Guardian’s Hadley Freeman previously wrote a profile of Rushdie last year:

Poor Salman Rushdie. The one thing I am most keen to talk to him about is the one thing he absolutely, definitely does not want to discuss. “I really resist the idea of being dragged back to that period of time that you insist on bringing up,” he grumbles when I make the mistake of mentioning it twice in the first 15 minutes of our conversation. He is in his elegant, book-lined apartment, a cosy armchair just behind him, the corridor to the kitchen over his shoulder. He’s in New York, which has been his home for the past 20 years, and we are talking – as is the way these days – on video. But even through the screen his frustration is palpable, and I don’t blame him. He’s one of the most famous literary authors alive, having won pretty much every book prize on the planet, including the best of the Booker for Midnight’s Children. We’re meeting to talk about his latest book, Languages Of Truth, which is a collection of nonfiction from the last two decades, covering everything from Osama bin Laden to Linda Evangelista; from Cervantes to Covid. So why do I keep bringing up the fatwa?

The full story is available here.

The CEO of PEN America, the literature and human rights non-profit, released a statement on Rushdie’s stabbing, writing that Rushdie had emailed her about placements for Ukrainian writers hours before he was attacked.

In a statement published on the organization’s website, Suzanne Nossel said:

“PEN America is reeling from shock and horror at word of a brutal, premeditated attack on our former President and stalwart ally, Salman Rushdie, who was reportedly stabbed multiple times while on stage speaking at the Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York.

…Just hours before the attack, on Friday morning, Salman had emailed me to help with placements for Ukrainian writers in need of safe refuge from the grave perils they face. Salman Rushdie has been targeted for his words for decades but has never flinched nor faltered. He has devoted tireless energy to assisting others who are vulnerable and menaced.

While we do not know the origins or motives of this attack, all those around the world who have met words with violence or called for the same are culpable for legitimizing this assault on a writer while he was engaged in his essential work of connecting to readers. Our thoughts and passions now lie with our dauntless Salman, wishing him a full and speedy recovery. We hope and believe fervently that his essential voice cannot and will not be silenced.”

Rushdie was formerly the president of PEN America.

Hochul commented further on Rushdie’s stabbing, confirming that the author is alive and receiving treatment at a local hospital.

“He’s getting the care he needs,” said Hochul, who also praised a state trooper at the event for saving Rushdie’s life.

The governor also confirmed that the event moderator was also attacked, with the New York state police previously saying that the interviewer sustained a minor head injury.

Here is video of Hochul condemning the attack and providing updates, from reporter Ayshah Tull:

New York governor Kathy Hochul posted a statement on Twitter about Rushdie’s attack, praising first responders at the scene who assisted Rushdie and apprehended the suspected attacker.

Thank you to the swift response of [New York state police] & first responders following today’s attack of author Salman Rushdie. Our thoughts are with Salman & his loved ones following this horrific event.

I have directed State Police to further assist however needed in the investigation.

Reactions to the stabbing of Rushdie have poured in across social media, with many expressing outrage, shock, and worry.

Feminist and author Taslima Nasreen expressed her concern and shock over Rushdie’s attack on Twitter:

I just learned that Salman Rushdie was attacked in New York. I am really shocked. I never thought it would happen. He has been living in the West, and he has been protected since 1989. If he is attacked, anyone who is critical of Islam can be attacked. I am worried.

Author Wajahat Ali, who spoke at Chautauqua Institution two weeks prior to Rushdie’s stabbing, called the attack “disgusting” and wished Rushdie a quick recovery:

I was there 2 weeks ago giving a talk. It’s a lovely place with a fantastic, curious and welcoming community. This is shocking. I hope Salman Rushdie isn’t injured and can recover and heal quickly. How disgusting.

PEN International, the renowned literary organization, published a statement on Twitter about the attack of Rushdie, writing:

We are deeply concerned by the news that former PEN America President [Salman Rushdie] was attacked today just before giving a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. We condemn the attack and wish him a fast recovery.

Here is additional footage of Rushdie being transported in a helicopter to a hospital for what we now know is an apparent stab wound to the neck.

From reporter Moshe Schwartz:

More information is emerging on the attack of author Salman Rushdie during a planned talk at an educational center in western New York state.

Here is a video taken from inside the event of medics assisting Rushdie on-site, depicting chaos and confusion as Rushdie was being treated.

From author Shiv Aroor: