Author Salman Rushdie, Focus Of Iranian Fatwa, Attacked Onstage In New York.

Rushdie is the author of The Satanic Verses, a book banned in Iran as many Muslims consider it blasphemous. A year after it was published in 1988, Iran’s leader at the time, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death.

Salman Rushdie remains hospitalized on a ventilator, with a damaged liver and nerve damage, his agent says, after the author was attacked as he prepared to give a lecture in rural New York state.

Police identified the man who allegedly stabbed Rushdie on August 12 as Hadi Matar, 24, of New Jersey. He was arrested at the scene in Chautauqua, New York by troopers providing security for the event.

No charges have been filed against Matar yet; police told reporters they have yet to determine a motive.

Andrew Wylie, Rushdie's agent, said in a statement that Rushdie had undergone surgery and had suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in his arm and that he was likely to lose one eye.

Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses drew death threats from Iran’s leader in the 1980s and spent years in hiding, was stabbed just before he was to deliver a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution, a spiritual retreat center in a rural corner of southwest New York State.

The center is known for its summertime lecture series, where Rushdie has spoken before.

The suspect stormed the stage as Rushdie was being introduced and attacked him and moderator Henry Reese, New York State Police said in a statement.
"Rushdie suffered an apparent stab wound to the neck, and was transported by helicopter to an area hospital. His condition is not yet known," the statement said.
A state trooper who had been assigned to the event immediately took the suspect into custody, the statement added. Reese suffered a minor head injury. Eyewitnesses said the attack lasted for nearly 20 seconds, with Hatar allegedly continuing to punch and stab Rushdie even as onlookers rushed to restrain him. Rushdie, 75, is the author of The Satanic Verses, a book banned in Iran because many Muslims consider it to be blasphemous. A year after it was published in 1988, Iran’s leader at the time, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death. Iran’s government has distanced itself from Khomeini’s decree, but anti-Rushdie sentiment has lingered. In 2012, a semiofficial Iranian religious foundation raised the bounty for Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million. Rushdie, who was forced into hiding for many years because of the fatwa, dismissed that threat at the time, saying there was no evidence of people being interested in the reward. The Swedish institution that awards the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 denounced the fatwa, saying reward money for Rushdie's death was a "flagrant” breach of international law. Rushdie published a memoir about his life under the fatwa called Joseph Anton, the pseudonym he used while under British police protection. His second novel, Midnight Children, is set during the 1947 partition of India and won the Booker Prize. His new novel, Victory City, is due to be published in February. Rushdie was at the Chautauqua Institution to take part in a discussion about the United States serving as asylum for writers and artists in exile and "as a home for freedom of creative expression," according to the institution’s website.
Rushdie was Born in Mumbai, India, and holds British and U.S. citizenship. He has lived in New York since 2000, according to Politico. Since dropping his alias and partially coming out of hiding in 2001, Rushdie has been a prominent spokesman for free expression and liberal causes. He is a former president of PEN America, which said it was “reeling from shock and horror” at the attack. “We can think of no comparable incident of a public violent attack on a literary writer on American soil,” CEO Suzanne Nossel said in a statement.

With reporting by AP, Sky News, CBS, and Politico