When novelist Salman Rushdie appeared August 12, 2022, in upstate New York at the Chautauqua Institution, he intended to speak on the subject of safety for writers and other public voices. He was already an object lesson. After Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in 1989 against the writer for The Satanic Verses, Rushdie went into hiding.
Several people connected to the novel’s publication were either killed or injured in subsequent attacks—including, most recently, Rushdie himself. As Rushdie rose in the amphitheater to speak, a man darted from the crowd to the stage and knifed the author fourteen times.
Read Full Article »
