Author Salman Rushdie Hospitalized After Stabbing Attack on New York Lecture Stage

Per CNN, the suspect was identified as 24-year-old Hadi Matar from Fairview, New Jersey. According to state police reports, Matar had jumped the stage, and stubbed Rushdie in the neck and abdomen, respectively, at least once. The attacker was rushed to the ground before he was taken into custody, while Rushdie was rushed to a hospital.

A witness recalled details of the attack to the outlet, saying that the attacker had approached the author while “making a stabbing motion with his hand repeatedly.” Another witness claimed that a man had motioned seven to 10 stabs.

Governor Kathy Hocul updated reporters on Rushdie’s condition, saying that the 75-year-old was “alive” and “getting the care he needs.”

“Here is an individual who has spent decades speaking truth to power,” the governor said of the novelist. “Someone who has been out there unafraid, despite the threats that have followed him his entire adult life it seems.”

According to AP, at the time of the release of “The Satanic Verses” in 1988, the novel was considered blasphemous by many Muslims, who claimed a written character was an insult to the Prophet Muhammad. There were other objections to the book, although Rushdie was an Indian born into a Muslim family.

Violent protests have erupted against Rushdie’s work in the past, with Iran banning the book and the country’s leader, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issuing a 1989 fatwa, or religious legal pronouncement, that called for his assassination. Khomeini died the same year and Iran’s current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei withdrew the edict.

During these riots, at least 45 people were killed, with 12 victims belonging to Rushdie’s hometown in Mumbai. Other victims include a Japanese translator of the novel, who was stabbed to death in 1991, and an Italian translator who survived an attack with a knife. Another Norwegian publisher was shot three times and survived in 1993.

While speaking in New York back in 2012, Rushdie ousted terrorism as the art of fear.

“The only way you can defeat it is by deciding not to be afraid,” he said.