Salman Rushdie, in Paris on September 10, 2018 (AFP / JOEL SAGET)
Salman Rushdie is doing slightly better, according to his loved ones, two days after the author of “Satanic Verses,” who had been threatened with death by a fatwa from Iran since 1989, was stabbed at least 10 times by a Lebanese-American in the north of the United States.
This Friday morning, the attack on the stage of an amphitheater in the cultural hub of the quiet town of Chautauqua near Lake Erie in upstate New York shocked the West but was welcomed by Muslim extremists.
The 75-year-old British-American intellectual is off life support and “the road to recovery has begun,” hailed his agent Andrew Wylie in a press release sent to the Washington Post.
“The injuries are serious but his condition is progressing in the right direction,” added this close friend of the world-famous writer, who was stabbed 10 times in the neck and stomach. A 24-year-old man, Hadi Matar, rushed onto the stage before Mr. Rushdie spoke at the Chautauqua Cultural Center.
– “Humor intact” –
Zafar Rushdie, his son, confirmed on Twitter that his father “could say a few words” and that he “kept his sense of humor.” The family was “very relieved”.
Salman Rushdie remains hospitalized in Erie, Pennsylvania, on the edge of the lake that separates the United States from Canada.
While Sunday’s news is reassuring, Constable Wylie was alarming on Friday, speaking of serious arm and liver injuries and the possible loss of an eye.
Conference host Henry Reese, 73, who was shot lightly in the face, told CNN the attack “felt like some kind of bad joke that didn’t seem real. When there was blood behind him, it became real.”
Her attacker, Hadi Matar, who was born in the United States, resides in New Jersey and whose parents are from a village in southern Lebanon, was charged with “attempted murder and assault”.
Wearing a black-and-white striped prisoner’s uniform, handcuffed and masked, he said nothing in Chautauqua court Saturday night and, using the voice of his attorney, pleaded not guilty.
He is scheduled to appear again on August 19th.
– intentionally –
Without giving a motive, prosecutors called the attack premeditated.
Chrono about Salman Rushdie ( AFP / )
The attack sent shockwaves, especially in the West: US President Joe Biden paid tribute to Mr. Rushdie for his “refusal to be intimidated and silenced”.
Living in New York for twenty years and naturalized as an American in 2016, Salman Rushdie had resumed almost normal public life while continuing to defend satire and irreverence in his books.
Coincidentally, the German magazine Stern had interviewed him a few days before the attack: “Since I’ve been living in the USA, I no longer have a problem (…) My life is back to normal,” assures the writer. in that interview, due to be published August 18, he said he was “optimistic” despite “daily death threats.”
Salman Rushdie, born in India in 1947 to a family of non-practicing Muslim intellectuals, had set fire to part of the Islamic world in 1988 with the publication of the “Satanic Verses”, judged by the strictest Muslims to be blasphemous Koran and the Prophet Muhammad, and getting Iranian Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini to issue the fatwa calling for his assassination.
In fact, the fatwa was never repealed and many of its translators were attacked.
– “Universal” combat –
The entrance to UPMC Hamot Hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania (USA), August 13, 2022 (AFP / Jorge Uzon)
“His fight is ours, more universal,” President Emmanuel Macron said, while UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “appalled”.
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid – whose country is an enemy of Iran – denounced “the result of decades of incitement to assassination by the extremist Iranian regime”.
But in Muslim countries, the attack was welcomed by extremists.
In Iran, the ultra-conservative daily Kayhan praised “this courageous and dutiful man who attacked the renegade and vicious Salman Rushdie,” and the Java paper wrote on Sunday that it was a US conspiracy that “is likely to spread Islamophobia around the world want to spread”. “.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday that the Iranian state media “glared” at the attack on the intellectual. “It’s despicable,” he said in a statement.
In Pakistan, Pakistan’s Tehreek-e-Labbaik party – notorious for its violence against what it considers anti-Muslim blasphemy – said Rushdie “deserved to be killed”.
In the UK, police are investigating a threat that Harry Potter author JK Rowling said she targeted on Twitter after expressing her support for Salman Rushdie.