Salman Rushdie's 'road to recovery has begun,' author's agent says, as stabbing suspect pleads not guilty Photo by Nicolas Roses/Abaca/Sipa USA(Sipa via AP Images) Nicolas Roses/Abaca/Sipa USA/AP Rushdie, whose novel "The Satanic Verses" drew death threats from Iran's leader in the 1980s, was stabbed in the neck and abdomen Friday by a man who rushed the stage as the author was about to give a lecture in western New York. Montazeri, who also opposed mass executions of Iran’s dissidents, fell out of favor with the regime and was placed under house arrest in 1997.Ī 1989 letter published in The New York Review of Books signed by Arab and Muslim scholars also decried the campaign against Rushdie.įile photo dated Septemof author Salman Rushdie at a signing session in Strasbourg, east of France. The New Yorker’s Robin Wright reports that Khomeini’s closest protege at the time, Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, criticized the decree. Yet then, as now, it had its prominent Muslim and regional detractors. It elevated Khomeini in the eyes of Islam’s fundamentalists across the Muslim world, including among Sunnis. The ensuing fatwa proved to be politically useful.
Iran didn’t ban the book straightaway the country’s rulers only took action several months later, after the book inspired protests in Pakistan. The Satanic Verses draws on a deeply controversial story in early Islamic tradition that claims that Satan momentarily intruded in the divine revelations to the Prophet Mohammed. Regardless of their motivations, Iran’s cynical exploitation of some Muslims sensibilities is plain to see. Throughout it all, Iran appeared to insist on continuing to dangle the executioner’s sword in front of Rushdie. Khamenei still tweets from other accounts.įour months before Rushdie was brutally stabbed at an event in New York on Friday, an Iranian news outlet, Iran Online, published an article praising the fatwa. In 2019, Iran’s current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei reminded his followers that the ruling against Rushdie was “solid and irrevocable,” in a tweet that led to the shutting down of his account. In 2006, Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Iran-backed Hezbollah, publicly lamented that the fatwa against the author had not been carried out, claiming it emboldened others to “insult” the Prophet Mohammed.
It was a deftly-crafted ambiguity that has defined Iran’s policy over the issue – and many other issues – in the intervening years. Iran blames Salman Rushdie and supporters for his stabbing An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman made the country's first public reaction to the stabbing of Salman Rushdie on Monday.
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