Salman Rushdie stabbed in the neck

[Cmaier]

Salman Rushdie: Author in surgery after being stabbed on stage

The author, 75, has suffered years of Islamist death threats since writing The Satanic Verses.

www.bbc.com

 

[lizkat]

Salman Rushdie: Author in surgery after being stabbed on stage

The author, 75, has suffered years of Islamist death threats since writing The Satanic Verses.

www.bbc.com

This is terrible. A huge security lapse for there not to have been some officially prepared intervention when the attack occurred. I mean by that that the whole Chautauqua Institution itself is a gated community, and this guy somehow got to the stage, dressed in some kind of "loose black garment" at the moment of attack? Maybe he added the identity-blurring outerwear after gaining access normally with other guests.

Salman Rushdie Updates: Salman Rushdie on Ventilator Hours After Being Stabbed in Western New York (Published 2022)

“The news is not good,” the author’s agent, Andrew Wylie, said in an emailed update Friday evening. He said Mr. Rushdie might lose an eye and his liver had been damaged. The celebrated author, who has long faced death threats, was stabbed by a 24-year old New Jersey man. Police said the motive...

www.nytimes.com

Buffalo News put up a piece on it. Suspect is in custody.

Watch now: Author Salman Rushdie stabbed in neck on stage at Chautauqua Institution

State police said that the assailant attacked Rushdie and an interviewer and that Rushdie suffered an "apparent stab wound to the neck."

buffalonews.com

 

[Deleted member 215]

A horrible attack on free speech, literature, and intellectualism. No doubt some will be praising this. It will be interesting to find out what the motive was.

 

[lizkat]

A horrible attack on free speech, literature, and intellectualism. No doubt some will be praising this. It will be interesting to find out what the motive was.

At least they have the guy in custody. Does he end up being a pawn for some state sponsored attack on "a heretic" or just someone who has taken extreme personal offense at Rushdie's writing. Taking the trouble to show up at an event like this doesn't seem like the work of some run-of-mill anti-Muslim xenophobe. That would be too ironic really.

It's concerning to me that this occurs while the world awaits final word on revival of the Iran nuclear agreement, with the US and EU and Iran and IAEA having agreed on a "final" text to be given a "yes or no" response in near future. Iran still has a fatwa out on Rushdie.

 

[lizkat]

An update: Salman Rushdie is on a ventilator, may lose an eye, nerves in an arm were severed and his liver has been damaged.

The LA Times has a piece up with backstory on the controversy over Rushdie's work The Satanic Verses, and some history on attacks against translators and the publisher of that work over the years. The fatwa is still in effect despite Iran in more recent years having declined to support or oppose killing Rushdie; meanwhile the bounty on his head has increased anyway.

What is a fatwa? Salman Rushdie's backstory moves center stage after attack

A fatwa was issued against Salman Rushdie in 1989 over his book 'The Satanic Verses.' But what is a fatwa and how has it affected his life and career?

www.latimes.com

 

[shadow puppet]

An update: Salman Rushdie is on a ventilator, may lose an eye, nerves in an arm were severed and his liver has been damaged.

This is just awful.

 

[lizkat]

Some in the USA are cool with book banning. That stuff never stops at pulling books off shelves.

It was not coincidental that two translators and the publishers of The Satanic Verses were hunted down in their own countries and attacked.

From that LAT piece I had cited earlier

In July 1991, Hitoshi Igarashi, the scholar who translated “The Satanic Verses” into Japanese, was found stabbed to death in the hallway of a building on the Tsukuba University campus, northeast of Tokyo. His body had a deep knife wound in the neck and cuts on the hands and face, police said.

A week earlier, Ettore Capriolo, the man who translated “The Satanic Verses” into Italian, had been attacked at his Milan apartment, suffering knife wounds on his neck, chest and hands. Capriolo survived the attack. The attacker had attempted, unsuccessfully, to get Capriolo to reveal Rushdie’s address.

In October 1993, the novel’s Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, was shot three times and left for dead outside his home in Oslo. He spent months in a hospital recovering. It wasn’t until 2018 that authorities filed charges and stated that the shooting was linked to “The Satanic Verses.”

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

Poor Salman. There really are some fanatical messed up people in this world. I hope he pulls through.