On August 12, 2022, a man stabbed Indian-born author Salman Rushdie multiple times as he prepared to give a conference in a public venue in Chautauqua, New York. Rushdie, who is in his 70s, survived the attack, but he may lose an eye and recovery will be slow. At the amphitheatre, a 24-year-old man was arrested for the crime.
At ease
The author had only recently told the German magazine Stern how normal and relaxed his life had become since the late 1980s, when ‘The Satanic Verses’ was published and Rushdie received numerous death threats. To understand what happened to Salman Rushdie in that New York amphitheatre (as seen here) and why ‘The Satanic Verses’ is so divisive, we must first look at his past.
The Artist as a Young Man
In the year 1947, Ahmed Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay (now Mumbai). Rushdie’s father was a successful Muslim businessman who raised Salman in an English-speaking household. Rushdie attended the Rugby School and then the University of Cambridge, where he earned a history degree in 1968. ‘Midnight Children,’ his second novel, was an unexpected international success, solidifying his literary career.
Satan’s Verses
Rushdie’s fourth novel, ‘The Satanic Verses,’ however, made him famous around the world, albeit not for the reasons he would have preferred. Muslim leaders in the United Kingdom and elsewhere condemned the novel as blasphemous, particularly its depiction of a character based on the prophet Mohammad.
On February 14, 1989, Iran’s supreme and religious leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa against Rushdie. Anyone willing to execute him was offered a monetary reward. The book was later banned in countries such as India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Sudan, South Africa, Kenya, and Singapore.
Burning books
‘The Satanic Verses’ not only created a schism between Muslim and Western nations, but also divided British society at the time. The book is shown being burned in Bradford, England, in 1989. Rushdie issued a formal apology to those who had taken offense to ‘The Satanic Verses’ in 1990.
Other victims
Since then, Muslim extremists have carried out numerous acts of violence, including bombings and assassinations, citing the book as their main motivation. In 1991, the Japanese translator of ‘The Satanic Verses’ was stabbed to death. While the translators of the Turkish and Italian editions escaped assassination attempts. In 1993, the book’s Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard (pictured), was shot in the back three times.
Rushdie fled into exile. He assumed the alias Joseph Anton and kept a low profile. He continued to write while in hiding, and in 2012, he published a ‘memoir’ about Joseph Anton, detailing his life during and after the ‘Satanic Verses’ controversy. The Iranian government has changed its position on Rushdie’s fatwa several times, with the current Ayatollah confirming that the edict was still in effect in 2017.
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