Salman Rushdie stabbed: How The Satanic Verses changed Rushdie's life
Salman Rushdie stabbed: Since the publication of The Satanic Verses in September 1988, British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie who won the Booker Prize for his Midnight's Children (1981) has faced innumerable threats to his life.
On Friday, as he waited to deliver a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York, on the importance of the US offering asylum for artistes in exile, author Salman Rushdie, 75, was attacked by a man who stabbed him onstage. Even as Rushdie fell to the floor, his assailant was taken into custody.
Fatwa and death threats
Since the publication of The Satanic Verses in September 1988, the British-Indian writer who won the Booker Prize for his Midnight’s Children (1981) has faced innumerable threats to his life. On February 14, 1989, Iran’s religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced a fatwa on Rushdie for “insulting Islam” with his novel. The repercussions of this would continue to be felt for decades to come. Even as Rushdie went into hiding following the fatwa, book bans, book burnings, firebombings and death threats continued unabated for years to come, raising important questions about freedom of expression in the arts around the world.
The controversy around The Satanic Verses
In an interview to Channel 4 in 1989, soon after the publication of The Satanic Verses, Rushdie had responded to the rising criticism of the book by making a case for freedom of expression. “If you don’t want to read a book, you don’t have to read it. It’s very hard to be offended by The Satanic Verses — it requires a long period of intense reading. It’s a quarter of a million words.”
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