Image Credit: Gilbert Carrasquillo/Getty Images / twitter.com/@ShivAroor 
Author Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses, was stabbed in New York, Monday while delivering a lecture on stage.
Footage posted online shows the moments immediately after a man rushed the stage at the Chautauqua Institution and reportedly stabbed the author in the neck.
Additional videos and photos show the Indian-born British author being wheeled off in a stretcher to a medical helicopter to be transported to a hospital.
New York Gov. Kathy Hotchul (D-NY) held a press conference Friday where she confirmed Rushdie is still alive and credited a police officer with saving his life.
The award-winning author has been a target of fundamentalist Muslims since his 1988 fictional novel, The Satanic Verses, which they claim blasphemously depicts the prophet Mohammed, was perceived as insulting towards the Islamic faith.
SuperSummary.com describes:
“The book was burned, riots resulted in death, and a religious edict was issued against Rushdie in 1989 by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that called for the author to be killed. Rushdie was placed under police protection; several translators of the novel were attacked or killed by people who wanted the novel banned.”
A year after the book’s release, the Supreme Leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to kill Rushdie if possible. The bounty associated with the fatwa was raised to $3.3 million in 2012, and reportedly still remains in effect.
Radical Islamists celebrated the attack on social media, with many sharing photos of the suspected stabber who they praised as a “Ghazi” (Muslim warrior) and “lion-hearted.”
The lion-hearted youth who attacked Salman Rushdie
Labaikians salutes this lion heart Man.
#Labbaik_Faizabad pic.twitter.com/Huw7qKxhQk
— Syed Abdul Hai
(@YouKnow__Syed21) August 12, 2022
In the face of the criticism, Rushdie maintained that freedom of expression means he’s allowed to write what he wants even if it offends some people.
Rushdie notably condemned the radical Islamic attack on French publication Charlie Hebdo in 2015 that left 12 dead and 11 injured after it published illustrations of the prophet Mohammed.
Salman Rushdie on Freedom of Expression after Charlie Hebdo. Anyone who condemns this attack on him with a ‘but’ should listen to this and understand that they are a part of this ‘but brigade’. It is horrific what happened to him, these powerful words resonate even more today. pic.twitter.com/OzVgqFM8w7
— Aadit Kapadia આદિત કાપડિયા (@ask0704) August 12, 2022
It remains to be seen whether the attack was religiously motivated.
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