Digital Desk: A few hardliners Salman Rushdie, whose book "The Satanic Verses" had attracted death threats from Iran since 1989, was stabbed and critically injured on Saturday, and admiration for the attacker was showered on Iranian newspapers.
Rushdie was stabbed in the neck and body on Friday while giving
a lecture in New York State, but there has been no official response from Iran
to the incident as of yet.
The conservative Kayhan newspaper, whose chief editor is chosen
by Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, however, wrote.
The hand of the person who tore the neck of God's enemy must be
kissed, the speaker continued, adding, "A thousand bravos... to the brave
and dutiful individual who attacked the apostate and vile Salman Rushdie in New
York."
After his work was deemed to be blasphemous in 1989, the late
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the architect of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution,
issued a fatwa, or religious decree, ordering Muslims worldwide to kill the
Indian-born author, sending him into years of hiding.
In response to a tweet that stated that Khomeini's fatwa against
Rushdie was "firm and irrevocable," Twitter suspended Khamenei's
account in 2019.
An often-quoted statement by Khamenei that the "arrow"
fired by Khomeini "will one day hit the target" was published on the
Asr Iran news website on Saturday.
Anyone who followed Khomeini's edict may get a $2.7 million
award from a powerful Iranian religious group. In 2012, it boosted the sum to
$3.3 million.
"Knife in Salman Rushdie's neck," said the headline of
the conservative Vatan Emrooz daily.
"Satan on the way to hell," read the headline of the
Khorasan daily.
Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old Fairview, New Jersey man who had purchased a permit to the event at the Chautauqua Institution, was the suspect, according to New York authorities. There is no known reason behind the strike.
After the incident, which was denounced as an infringement on his right to free speech by authors and politicians worldwide, Rushdie was put on a ventilator and unable to speak on Friday evening.
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