Salman Rushdie alive, New York state governor Kathy Hochul confirms

New Delhi: New York state governor Kathy Hochul has confirmed at a press conference that British author Salman Rushdie is still alive, reports BBC. Rushdie is "getting the care he needs" after being taken to hospital, says Hochul.

Hochul also paid tribute to the police officer who "saved [Rushdie's] life", and that of the event moderator who was attacked as well. She described Chautauqua, the town where the attack took place, as "a very tranquil rural community" and an "ideal" place for notable figures like Rushdie to talk.

The governor went on to condemn the violence, saying it's important people feel free to "speak and to write truth".

Meanwhile, a doctor who was at the Chautauqua Institution event told the New York Times that she helped treat Rushdie after the stabbing.

What happened?

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.

According to the New York Times, Rita Landman, an endocrinologist, was in the audience and walked on stage to offer assistance. She said that the 75-year-old writer had “multiple stab wounds, including one to the right side of his neck, and that there was a pool of blood under his body”. But she said he appeared to be alive and was not receiving CPR, according to the newspaper. He was taken by helicopter to a local hospital.

What is known of the attacker?

A state trooper assigned to the event at the Chautauqua Institution, where Rushdie was due to give a talk, took the suspect into custody, while the interviewer suffered an injury to the head. Police gave no details about the suspect's identity or any probable motive.

New York Times reports, Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country’s largest Muslim civil rights group, said he was concerned people might rush to blame Muslims or Islam for the stabbing before the attacker’s identity or motive were publicly known. “American Muslims, like all Americans, condemn any violence targeting anyone in our society,” he said.

Similarly, a representative for the Iranian interests section at the embassy of Pakistan in Washington, DC, which diplomatically represents the government of Iran in the United States, declined to comment on the attack, reports the New York Times “We are not getting involved in this," said the representative, who declined to give his name before he hung up, it said.

A decade of hiding

Rushdie, 75, was propelled into the spotlight with his second novel "Midnight's Children" in 1981, which won international praise and Britain's prestigious Booker Prize for its portrayal of post-independence India.

But his 1988 book "The Satanic Verses" brought attention beyond his imagination when it sparked a fatwa, or religious decree, calling for his death by Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The novel was considered by some Muslims as disrespectful of the Prophet Mohammed.

Rushdie, who was born in India to non-practicing Muslims and today identifies as an atheist, was forced to go underground as a bounty was put on his head -- which remains today.

He was granted police protection by the government in Britain, where he was at school and where he made his home, following the murder or attempted murder of his translators and publishers.

He spent nearly a decade in hiding, moving houses repeatedly and being unable to tell his children where he lived.

Rushdie only began to emerge from his life on the run in the late 1990s after Iran in 1998 said it would not support his assassination.

Now living in New York, he is an advocate of freedom of speech, notably launching a strong defense of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo after its staff were gunned down by Islamists in Paris in 2015.

The magazine had published drawings of Mohammed that drew furious reactions from Muslims worldwide.

Threats and boycotts continue against literary events that Rushdie attends, and his knighthood in 2007 sparked protests in Iran and Pakistan, where a government minister said the honour justified suicide bombings.

The fatwa failed to stifle Rushdie's writing and inspired his memoir "Joseph Anton," named after his alias while in hiding and written in the third person.

"Midnight's Children" -- which runs to more than 600 pages -- has been adapted for the stage and silver screen, and his books have been translated into more than 40 languages.

With input from agencies

Also read:

Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie attacked on lecture stage in New York

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