Salman Rushdie had to live in hiding for years because of death threats. He said in an interview that his life was now “pretty normal” just a few weeks before an attacker stabbed him and seriously hurt him in New York state. In an interview with the German magazine Stern, Rushdie talked about the threats to American democracy. He also said that he was an optimist and pointed out that it had been a long time since the fatwa, a religious order from Iran in 1989 that told Muslims all over the world to kill him for blasphemy. The magazine was supposed to publish the interview on August 18, but Stern made it public on Saturday, just one day after Rushdie was attacked. The editorial staff of the magazine says that the interview took place about two weeks ago.
A few hours after that, a writer from Bombay named Salman Rushdie was attacked. K. Natwar Singh, who was a Union minister in Rajiv Gandhi’s government and was in charge of banning the controversial book The Satanic Verses, strongly defended the decision on Saturday, saying that it was made to keep peace and order. AP reports that a doctor who was one of the people who rushed to help Rushdie after he was stabbed at a book event in New York State said that the author’s wounds are “severe but treatable.”
Rushdie was stabbed in the neck and body while he was speaking, and he is expected to lose an eye because of it. Rushdie lived in exile for many years after Iran told Muslims to kill him because of his writing. Rushdie’s lawyer says that the nerves in his 75-year-old arm were cut and that his liver was stabbed and hurt. Hadi Matar, who is 24 years old, has been arrested by the police because he is thought to have done the crime. Rushdie was born in Bombay, India, to a Muslim Kashmiri family. He later moved to the UK. He has been threatened with death for a long time because of his fourth book, “The Satanic Verses.” Most notably, Iran’s powerful cleric and leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa telling Muslims to kill the author.
