British author Salman Rushdie hospitalized after being stabbed at a conference in New York State

British writer Salman Rushdie, the target of death threats from Iran since the publication of satanic verses (1988), was assaulted and stabbed in the neck as he prepared to speak at a conference in New York State, United States, reports Friday August 12 the American agency Associated Press (AP).

The perpetrator was airlifted to a hospital, New York State Police said. in a press release, without giving further details on his state of health. The alleged attacker has been arrested, local authorities said.

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A man rushed to the stage at the Chautauqua Institution as Salman Rushdie was introduced and began punching the writer, according to an AP reporter at the scene. Salman Rushdie fell and the assailant was immediately subdued, the journalist added.

#SalmonRushdie attacked at @chq. Jarring situation. https://t.co/1uYmZCG0rH

—Charlie Savenor (@Charles Savenor)

Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses has been banned in Iran since 1988, as many Muslims consider it blasphemous. The following year, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution from 1979 to 1989, issued a fatwa (religious decree) calling for the death of the author.

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Salman Rushdie, born in 1947 in Bombay, India, two months before its independence from the British Empire, tries not to be reduced to the scandal caused by the publication of satanic verses. “My problem is that people continue to see me through the sole prism of the ‘fatwa'”said a few years ago this free-thinker who wants to be a writer, not a symbol.

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But current events – the rise to power of radical Islam – have constantly brought it back to what it has always been in the eyes of the West: the symbol of the fight against religious obscurantism and for freedom of expression. Already in 2005, he considered that this fatwa had constituted a prelude to the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Forced from then on to live in hiding and under police protection, going from cache to cache, he called himself Joseph Anton, in homage to his favorite authors, Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov.

The World with AFP