To Support Salman Rushdie, Just Read Him
First there is shock and then despair at the news of the assault on Salman Rushdie. He had lived under the threat of the fatwa for decades. Even with the Iranian government’s retreat from the death sentence in 1998, he could never be sure that a lone individual would not attempt to kill him. And that may be what happened on Friday. It’s also possible that the attempt on Rushdie’s life may be linked to the US Department of Justice’s extraordinary announcement last week that it was charging a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with the use of interstate commerce facilities in a plot to murder former national security adviserJohn Bolton in 2021.
Salman Rushdie believed his life was “very normal again” and that fears of an attack were a thing of the past, he had told an interviewer just two weeks before he was stabbed on stage in New York on Friday.
The novelist, who remained in hospital on Saturday, was knifed several times, including in the neck and abdomen. His agent, Andrew Wylie, said his liver had been damaged and that he was likely to lose an eye.
His alleged attacker, 24-year-old Hadi Matar, has been charged with attempted murder and assault.
Salman Rushdie had started to believe his ‘life was normal again’
An attorney for Hadi Matar entered the plea on his behalf during an arraignment in western New York.
The suspect appeared in court wearing a black-and-white jumpsuit and a white face mask, with his hands cuffed in front of him.
A judge ordered him to be held without bail after District Attorney Jason Schmidt told her Mr Matar took steps to purposely put himself in a position to harm Rushdie, getting an advance pass to the event where the author was speaking and arriving a day early bearing a fake ID.
"This was a targeted, unprovoked, preplanned attack on Mr Salman Rushdie," Mr Schmidt said.
Public defender Nathaniel Barone complained that authorities had taken too long to get Mr Matar in front of a judge while leaving him "hooked up to a bench at the state police barracks."
"He has that constitutional right of presumed innocence," Mr Barone added.
Mr Matar is accused of attacking Rushdie as the author was being introduced at a lecture at the Chautauqua Institute.
Mr Matar, from Fairview, New Jersey, was arraigned late on Friday on charges of attempted murder in the second degree and assault in the second degree, the Mr Schmidt, said in a statement.
Man suspected of attacking Salman Rushdie charged with attempted murder, assault Reuters. Useful thread on “the Satanic Verses”
Salman Rushdie recovering
It's good to hear that author Salman Rushdie is recovering from the recent assault on him.
There continues to be lots of coverage and commentary; see now also:
- Authors on the Salman Rushdie attack: ‘A society cannot survive without free speech’ at The Guardian
- Where Salman Rushdie defied those who would silence him, today too many fear causing offence by Kenan Malik in The Observer
- Amitava Kumar’s open letter to Hadi Matar: You have failed — we are all returning to Rushdie’s words at The Indian Express
And, from a while back, see my review of Kenan Malik's From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy.
Salman Rushdie assaulted
As widely reported and condemned, some piece of shit assaulted and seriously injured author Salman Rushdie yesterday at an event at the Chautauqua Institution.
There's a great deal of coverage of this -- see, for example, live updates at The New York Times and The Guardian, or Nitish Pahwa's Q & A with Nader Hashemi at Slate, Why the Attack on Salman Rushdie Is So Shocking.
Leaving aside his significance as an author, Rushdie has long been a leading torchbearer for free speech, and I have great respect and admiration for his words and actions in support of it over all these years.
(Several Rushdie titles are under review at complete review -- though none from his most formidable period (the decade that saw Midnight's Children, Shame, and, yes, The Satanic Verse) --; see, for example, his memoir, Joseph Anton.)
We internalised the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. This horrific attack is what follows
There has been terrible retreat from freedom of expression. We should ponder that as we condemn this outrage
