Three days before being stabbed, Friday August 12, in the State of New York, Salman Rushdie, 75, announced the release of Victory cityhis fifteenth book, in February 2023. The novelist felt that continuing to write was “ a form of resistance against fanaticism, Islamist totalitarianism and the inquisition courts of modern times “. The author had been threatened with death since the end of the 1980s, after writing The Satanic Verses. He was the target of a fatwa from Khomeini in 1989, sentencing him to death for signing a novel that the Iranian ayatollah found blasphemous. “ All zealous Muslims in the world are called upon to promptly execute, wherever they are, Salman Rushdie and his publishers he had said.
Born in Bombay, India, in 1947, the English-speaking author has been living in Great Britain for years, and bears his nationality. He was raised by a family of non-practicing Muslim intellectuals who were wealthy, progressive and cultured. His native country was one of the first to ban, in October 1988, The Satanic Verseshis fourth book, when it was released in England, “ for offense to religious feelings “. And then several other countries followed. The author was therefore forced to live in hiding and under police protection.
Rushdie has since been seen as a symbol of freedom and resistance by some, and as an impious Muslim, ridiculing the Prophet Mohamad and the Koran, by others. We defended him or attacked him, depending on the case, without necessarily having read or understood his works, written in a style that is not one of the easiest. This situation bothered him, in the long term, because he wanted to be seen above all as a writer and free-thinker, and not as a symbol. However, most people continued to perceive it under the single prism of the fatwa.
His attacker, Hadi Matar, 24, is a Shiite of Lebanese origin, an admirer of Ayatollah Khomeini. Arrested and taken into custody by the police, preliminary investigations revealed that he would have connections with Shiite extremism; his act was hailed by the conservative Iranian press.
« Salman is likely to lose an eye, the nerves in his arm have been severed and his liver has been stabbed and damaged », declared in the international press Andrew Wylie, the agent of the British writer.
Being stabbed in the neck and in the nerves of the arm reminded Egyptians of a similar assault that targeted Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz in October 1995 by an extremist who had never read one of his books, but who had taken the liberty of taxing him with an apostate for having written The Sons of the medina. Mahfouz suffered from this until the end of his life, as he was unable to make use of his right hand.
Lien court: