Salman Rushdie stabbed | International outrage after the attack on the author

(Erie) Salman Rushdie, author of satanic verses threatened with death for more than 30 years, remained hospitalized on Saturday in serious condition after being stabbed in the United States by a young man of Lebanese origin, an attack which raised a wave of international indignation, especially in the West.

Nothing filtered Saturday on the state of health of the famous British naturalized American writer, 75, treated in emergency and under respiratory assistance in a hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania, on the edge of the lake of the same name which separates the United States from Canada.

The attack caused a shock wave, especially in Western countries, the White House condemning “an appalling act of violence”.

Of Lebanese descent

The attacker, immediately arrested and in detention since Friday, is called Hadi Matar, is 24 years old and lives in the state of New Jersey, according to the authorities.

He was Saturday “formally prosecuted for attempted murder and assault”, announced the local prosecutor’s office, adding that investigators from the federal police (FBI) were working on this crime with an international dimension.

According to Ali Qassem Tahfa, the chief of the village of Yaroun, in southern Lebanon, Hadi Matar “is of Lebanese origin”.

“He was born and raised in the United States. His mother and father are from Yaroun,” Tahfa told AFP.

In Iran, the main ultra-conservative daily Kayhan praised the attacker: “Bravo to this brave and duty-conscious man who attacked the apostate and vicious Salman Rushdie,” the newspaper writes. “Let us kiss the hand of him who tore the neck of the enemy of God with a knife”.

And at the Tehran book market, everyone knew about the attack on Saturday, but only those who supported it spoke out: “I was very happy to hear the news. Whoever the author, I kiss his hand […] May God curse Salman Rushdie,” said Mehrab Bigdeli, who presents himself as a Shiite cleric.

Fatwa

The assault took place around 11 a.m. Friday on the stage of the amphitheater at the Chautauqua Cultural Center in New York State when a man ‘rushed onto the stage’ and ‘stabbed’ Mr. Rushdie several times “in the neck” “in the abdomen”, according to the local police.

“The news is not good”, had declared Friday evening to the New York Times Mr. Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie.

“Salman will probably lose an eye; the nerves in his arm were severed and he was stabbed in the liver,” Mr. Wylie detailed, adding that his client had been placed on an artificial respirator.

Salman Rushdie, born in 1947 in India into a family of non-practicing Muslim intellectuals, set part of the Islamic world ablaze with the publication of satanic versesleading Iranian Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa in 1989 calling for his assassination.

The author of fifteen novels, stories for young people, short stories and essays written in English had therefore been forced to live in hiding and under police protection, going from cache to cache.

convictions

Naturalized American and living in New York for a few years, Salman Rushdie had resumed a more or less normal life while continuing to defend, in his books, satire and irreverence.

Coincidentally, the German magazine Stern had interviewed him a few days before the attack and published an extract on Saturday: “Since I have been living in the United States, I no longer have a problem […] My life is normal again, assures the writer, saying he is “optimistic” but recalling that “death threats have become daily”.

Iran’s “fatwa” has never been lifted and many of its book’s translators have been injured in attacks or even killed, such as Japanese Hitoshi Igarashi, who was stabbed to death in 1991.

In the United States, online shopping sites like Amazon have seen an increase in orders for satanic verses and a section manager of the New York Strand Bookstore, Katie Silvernail, says that “people come to see what he has written and to know what we have” in stock.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denounced Saturday a “cowardly attack”, and an “affront to freedom of expression”.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was “appalled that Sir Salman Rushdie was stabbed while exercising a right that we should never stop defending”, referring to freedom of expression.

“His fight is ours, universal,” President Emmanuel Macron tweeted, while UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was “horrified”.

“Nothing justifies a fatwa, a death sentence”, was indignant finally Charlie Hebdo, French satirical newspaper decimated by an Islamist attack in 2015.