3.11. Attack on Salman Rushdie

 

This tragic assault was covered widely in the Press.

From a Wikipedia post the following was reporting about the Assault on Rushdie and the background about it.

On August 12, 2022, Indian-born British-American novelist Salman Rushdie was stabbed multiple times by 24-year-old Hadi Matar as he was about to give a public lecture. 

Rushdie has been threatened with death since 1989, a year after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, when the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for his assassination and set a bounty of $3 million for his death. 

For years, Rushdie had lived in hiding, taking strict security measures that gradually became more relaxed over time.

The Satanic Verses is the fourth novel from the Indian-British writer Salman Rushdie. First published in September 1988, the book was inspired by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. As with his previous books, Rushdie used magical realism and relied on contemporary events and people to create his characters. 

The title refers to the Satanic Verses, a group of Quranic verses about three pagan Meccan goddesses: Allāt, Al-Uzza, and Manāt.        
(Read more about the Satanic verses in Chapter 3.10)

The part of the story that deals with the satanic verses was based on accounts from the historians al-Waqidi and al-Tabari.