The British novelist Salman Rushdie was the target of an Iranian fatwa in 1989 that called for his execution. On Saturday, an ultra-conservative publication in Iran praised the person who stabbed Rushdie.
More than 30 years after going into hiding as a result of the fatwa issued by the late supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Mr. Rushdie remained on a ventilator following the attack at a literary event in New York State on Friday.
The publication, whose editor-in-chief is chosen by the current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared, “Bravo to this courageous and duty-conscious individual who assaulted the apostate and perverted Salman Rushdie in New York.”
The daily continued, “Let us kiss the hands of the one who tore the throat of the adversary of God with a knife.”
Iranian media, except for the reformist journal Etemad, adopted a similar stance and labelled Mr. Rushdie as an “apostate.”
According to Iran’s state-owned newspaper, the “neck of the devil” had been “slashed with a razor.”
The stabbing incident against Mr. Rushdie has not yet received any official statement from Iranian officials.
However, Mohammad Marandi, a member of the Iranian negotiation team for the Vienna nuclear talks, declared on Twitter that he would not be crying for a writer who spreads unrelenting hatred and disdain for Muslims and Islam.
But isn’t it strange that the U.S. claims to have hammered Bolton, and then this occurs, as we approach a potential nuclear agreement? He inquired.
Iran had earlier on Friday made suggestions that it would agree to a last-minute compromise to resuscitate its 2015 nuclear agreement with major nations, which led to the strike. This came when the European Union in Vienna submitted a “final document.”
According to accusations, a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards attempted to pay a person in the US $300,000 to assassinate former White House national security advisor John Bolton, according to the U.S.
Justice Department, which announced its indictment of the man on Wednesday.
The charges were rejected by Iran as “fiction.”
Rushdie, 75, gained international acclaim and the coveted Booker Prize for his second book, “Midnight’s Children,” which depicted post-independence India, the country of his birth, and catapulted him into the public eye.
However, when Khomeini issued a religious decree ordering his death, his 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses” altered his life.
Britain received assurances from Iran’s reformist president Mohammad Khatami’s administration in 1998 that Iran would not carry out the fatwa.
However, Khamenei declared in 2005 that he continued to think Mr. Rushdie was an apostate whose execution would be sanctioned by Islam.
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