Since 1989, the writer Salman Rushdie has had to live under the threat of a fatwa (a religious decree that in this case carried a death sentence) leveled at him for “blasphemy” by Iran’s then top leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, because of his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses.
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Novelist Salman Rushdie. (Archyde.com)
Yesterday morning, in the state of New York, the violence reached the writer and he was stabbed when he was participating in an event at the Chautauqua Institute, a cultural organization in the state of New York.
The author was attacked by a subject who was arrested moments later. New York police later confirmed her name and age, 24-year-old Hadi Matar. The announcement came as Rushdie, 75, was undergoing emergency surgery.
In the first hours, the police announced that he suffered a stab wound to the neck, for which he was taken by helicopter to the hospital.
Andrew Wylie, a representative for Rushdie, initially said the author was in surgery but gave no further details. However, at 7:00 p.m. yesterday, he stated that he is on a respirator. “The news is not good. Salman is likely to lose an eye, the nerves in his arm have been severed and his liver has been stabbed and damaged,” Archyde.com reported.
Low security
But, What happened to the security that regularly surrounds Salman Rushdie? The writer Mauricio Montiel Figueiras, a specialist in English literature, commented to MILENIO: “What is most surprising about all this, in addition to the attack itself, which is tremendous, very violent and somewhat inadmissible, is that there was not enough security where the conference was going to be. (According to the news), there was no proper security apparatus for a writer with a death threat hanging over his head and a $3 million reward for whoever killed him.”
The writer recalled that, in recent years, Rushdie asked not to be so closely watched, “because almost 30 years later and with the death of Ayatollah Khomeini he could already travel in a more relaxed way, but the fatwa has not been lifted despite the fact that the Iran’s government no longer agrees with it, radical Muslims will continue to exist, as the attacker appears to have done.”
An important fact, Montiel stressed, is that the matter of the death sentence against Salman Rushdie could be due, unbelievably, to a translation error. “Reading some things about the satanic verses It seems that it was an error of the translator to Arabic. As far as I understand, the idea of the satanic verses comes from a part of the Koran, but they are verses that are discarded, which Rushdie refers to in the Muslim world are known as ‘cranes’, so, the translation was the ‘cranes satanic’, but was directly translated as the ‘verses’ and sparked the ire of the Muslim world, and in particular the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini. How far a translation error can go, it’s almost surreal what it caused.”
Montiel says that the attack is also an attack on freedom of expression and literature. “We already know that Rushdie, right from the fatwa, became one of the writers who has most defended individual freedom and freedom of expression, so all this is unfortunate.”
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Even Hitoshi Igarashi, translator of the book into Japanese, was stabbed to death in 1991 at the University of Tsukuba, where he taught. The controversy was such that Rushdie had to hide for a while from the threats.
attack on freedom
The attack against Salman Rushdie has shocked the literary world, which has sent messages of support and condemned the act.
The writer Martín Solares said: “Let’s not lose sight of the fact that the attack on Salman Rushdie is an attack on the rights of all people to express themselves freely, without receiving threats of any kind.”
And he recalled a statement by the author: “The situation of writers in the world, far from improving, has been getting worse, more and more countries condemn and persecute them. But one must make the decision to be free and write from that position, because the opposite is not decisive.
The Oaxaca Book Fair shared: “Language and imagination cannot be imprisoned… We regret and condemn the events that occurred against the writer. We hope for his speedy recovery, we will continue working in a space for reflection in which freedom of expression always prevails”.
Markus Dohle CEO, Penguin Random House, stated: “We are deeply shocked and dismayed to learn of the attack on Salman Rushdie while speaking at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. We condemn this violent public attack and our thoughts are with Salman and his family at this harrowing time.”
Suzanne Nossel, Executive Director of PEN America, stated: “PEN America is reeling with shock and horror at the news of a brutal and premeditated attack on our former president and staunch ally. We cannot think of any comparable incident of a violent public attack on a literary writer on American soil.”
Nossel said that yesterday morning, shortly before the attack, “Salman emailed me to help me with the locations of Ukrainian writers who need a safe haven from the grave dangers they face. Salman Rushdie has come under fire for his words for decades, but he has never flinched or wavered.”
The writer noted that Rushdie has devoted tireless energy to helping others who are vulnerable and threatened. “Although we do not know the origins or motives of this attack, all those around the world who have met words with violence or have called for the same are guilty to legitimize this assault on a writer while he was engaged in his essential work of connecting readers. Our thoughts and passions are now with our intrepid Salman, wishing him a speedy and full recovery. We fervently hope and believe that his essential voice cannot and will not be silenced.”
The Guadalajara International Book Fair strongly condemned the attack on Rushdie: “The attack on the author of The Satanic Verses and Children of Midnight, among other essential works of contemporary literature, is also an affront to literary creation and freedom of expression. Literature is a bridge to equality and freedom, as well as a route to a world free of violence. We reiterate our outrage at the cowardly attack on Salman Rushdie, whose work embodies the best of literature, and wish him a speedy recovery,” the statement read.
A few days ago, Rushdie offered the paper “The novel and the languages of truth”, in a talk moderated by Gerardo Lammers, director of the Museum of Journalism and Graphic Arts, and Martín Solares, director of Guadalajara, World Book Capital.
Rushdie affirmed during his presentation that writers must write from freedom: “(Literature) can create beauty, joy, but it can also point out evil. I think these are the great issues of human life. Literature has deep issues at the roots of humanity, we can point and work with that.”
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