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Author Salmon Rushdie Attacked In New York

ZiprHead

ZiprHead

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CHAUTAUQUA, N.Y. (AP) — Salman Rushdie, the author whose writing led to death threats from Iran in the 1980s, was attacked Friday as he was about to give a lecture in western New York.

An Associated Press reporter witnessed a man storm the stage at the Chautauqua Institution and begin punching or stabbing Rushdie as he was being introduced. The 75-year-old author was pushed or fell to the floor, and the man was restrained.

Rushdie was quickly surrounded by a small group of people who held up his legs, presumably to send more blood to his chest.

His condition was not immediately known.

Hundreds of people in the audience gasped at the sight of the attack and were then evacuated.

Rushdie’s book “The Satanic Verses” has been banned in Iran since 1988, as many Muslims consider it to be blasphemous. A year later, Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death.
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Get well!

FZ-htRxXEAE5ee_
 
Gandhi knew he would eventually be assassinated, as did MLK.

Gandhi and Rushdie both ran coutner to very strong religious norms. It goes with the territory.
 
Gospel said:
Never herd of this guy until now. Thanks to the perpetrator I'll be picking up The Satanic Verses.
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I started reading it for the same reason.

It was boring, I took it back to the library about a week and 20 pages later.
Tom
 
20 Pages? I read Theodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and I didn't start seeing/feeling the world until around page 60. That's usually how far in it takes me to get immersed in a book. It's like moving to a new place and not seeing it as home until you've been there for a while. 20 pages? That's attention deficit more than it's the book. But then again, if it's anything like 50 shades of Grey then it's the book.
 
Gospel said:
20 Pages? I read Theodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and I didn't start seeing/feeling the world until around page 60. That's usually how far in it takes me to get immersed in a book. It's like moving to a new place and not seeing it as home until you've been there for a while. 20 pages? That's attention deficit more than it's the book. But then again, if it's anything like 50 shades of Grey then it's the book.
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It was a long time ago.

I remember waiting on the library list for over a month(yeah, I'm cheap). Once I got the book I started reading it. By the end of the evening I was flipping through pages looking for something interesting.

Something.
Anywhere.

Couldn't find anything.

Threw it back in my library tote bag.

Decided that the only interesting thing about the novel was that it upset Islamicists enough to make fatwas.

Tom
 
I'm a tough audience when it comes to fiction.

I grew up with the Trinity.
Clarke, Heinlein, and Asimov.

Many other celestial beings. But still...

Tom
 
My book reading introduction was this team

Richard Wright
Anthony Burgess
Bernard Shaw
Alex Haley
James Baldwin

My mother and my now dead Polish and still best friend are to blame for that.
 
With all due respect, classic scifi authors like Clarke or Asimov are popcorn compared to "real" literature. Sure I loved them as a kid, and still do, but reading something from Rushdie is somewhat more challenging. I read Satanic Verses when I was young (my parents had it in their book shelf), don't remember a crap about it. But Midnight's Children which I read a bit later I remember much better (including "the crap"), and that was pretty good.
 
If you haven't read Wells' War Of The Worlds, you should. It's amazing that it was written in the 1890s. So many science fiction tropes came from it, at a time when automobiles were just getting their start.
 
ZiprHead said:
If you haven't read Wells' War Of The Worlds, you should. It's amazing that it was written in the 1890s. So many science fiction tropes came from it, at a time when automobiles were just getting their start.
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At the risk of derailing this even further...

I've got an old, dog-eared paperback copy of the novelization of the seminal "Buck Rogers" story by Philip Francis Nowlan. Some if it is...quaint...but parts of it are eerily prescient. There's a scene in the first part where it describes an "ultra-phone" that seems reminiscent of a modern flip-phone. In the second half of the book (IIRC) it describes life in one of the Han (the Chinese had taken over America) cities. People lived in lavish apartments where they could order goods off of a wall-sized screen in their living room, pay for it electronically, and have it delivered to their door. In this world, "tech support" people were the elite.
 
This is a serious failure of security.

A state trooper and a county sheriff’s deputy were assigned to Rushdie’s lecture, and state police said the trooper made the arrest. But after the attack, some longtime visitors to the center questioned why there wasn’t tighter security for the event, given the decades of threats against Rushdie and a bounty on his head offering more than $3 million for anyone who kills him.

Rabbi Charles Savenor was among the roughly 2,500 people in the audience. Amid gasps, spectators were ushered out of the outdoor amphitheater.

The assailant ran onto the platform “and started pounding on Mr. Rushdie. At first you’re like, ‘What’s going on?’ And then it became abundantly clear in a few seconds that he was being beaten,” Savenor said. He said the attack lasted about 20 seconds.

Another spectator, Kathleen James, said the attacker was dressed in black, with a black mask.
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(Emphasis added, quoted from originally linked article in the op).
 
TomC said:
Gospel said:
20 Pages? I read Theodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and I didn't start seeing/feeling the world until around page 60. That's usually how far in it takes me to get immersed in a book. It's like moving to a new place and not seeing it as home until you've been there for a while. 20 pages? That's attention deficit more than it's the book. But then again, if it's anything like 50 shades of Grey then it's the book.
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It was a long time ago.

I remember waiting on the library list for over a month(yeah, I'm cheap). Once I got the book I started reading it. By the end of the evening I was flipping through pages looking for something interesting.

Something.
Anywhere.

Couldn't find anything.

Threw it back in my library tote bag.

Decided that the only interesting thing about the novel was that it upset Islamicists enough to make fatwas.

Tom
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www.bbc.com

Salman Rushdie: Author on ventilator and unable to speak, agent says

The Satanic Verses author was stabbed in the neck and abdomen at an event in New York state.
www.bbc.com
Salman Rushdie is on a ventilator and unable to speak after being stabbed on stage in the US, his agent says.
Andrew Wylie said that the author, 75, may lose one eye after the attack at an event in New York state.
Mr Rushdie went into hiding with police protection in the UK in 1988 after Iran's top leader called for his murder over his novel, The Satanic Verses, which some Muslims deemed blasphemous.
Police detained a suspect named as Hadi Matar, 24, from Fairview, New Jersey.
New York State Police said the suspect ran onto the stage and attacked Mr Rushdie and an interviewer at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York state.
Mr Rushdie was stabbed at least once in the neck and in the abdomen, authorities said. He was taken to a hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania, by helicopter.
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