Standing with Rushdie, protecting free speech

On August 12, 2022, a US-Lebanese citizen, Hadi Matar stabbed Salman Rushdie, now 77, multiple times when the celebrated author of Indian origin was introduced at a literary gathering in Chautauqua Institution near New York.

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Rushdie survived the attack but lost one eye. In a poignant 2024 memoir, Knife, Rushdie recalled the trauma the attack caused him, his family and friends, and also reflected deeply about the motivation that drove Matar to attack him.

In 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader of Iran, found Satanic Verses, Rushdie's novel on the Prophet, blasphemous, and ordered Muslims to kill the author. A decade later, Iran disassociated with the fatwa, but Rushdie had by then passed through a harrowing time living in secrecy and under security cover in the UK.