Salman Rushdie, award-winning author and figure of fury to the Iranian regime, has been stabbed yesterday while giving a lecture in New York.

The attacker rushed the stage and began stabbing at Rushdie, who sustained over ten wounds – including to the neck, face, and torso – before the man was dragged off by onlookers and detained. The 24-year-old New Jersey perpetrator is in police custody.

Rushdie was stabilised at the scene and then flown to a nearby hospital where he has been put on a ventilator and is unable to speak. There are reports that he may also lose an eye due to the severity of his injuries.

According to Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie: ‘The news is not good. Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.’

‘We can think of no comparable incident of a public attack on a literary writer on American soil,’ wrote the CEO of Free Expression Suzanne Nossel.

‘This appalling attack on my dear friend Salman represents an assault on freedom of thought and speech. These are the freedoms that underpin all our rights and liberties. Salman has been an inspirational defender of persecuted writers and journalists across the world,’ said Ian McEwan.

The act was also condemned by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel, US Senator of New York Chuck Schumer, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul.

Their defence of free speech in relation to Rushdie comes off a little hollow given the steep decline in civil liberty encouraged by both the UK and American governments in recent years. We wait to see if this brutal attack on an author leads to any revelations within Western governments about the state of free speech within their legislation.

By chance, the aftermath of the incident was caught by an onlooker, with the shocking footage showing blood across the stage where Rushdie was attacked. The moderator of the event was also injured when he tried to intervene to save Rushdie.

New York Police have named the suspect as Hadi Matar. Police have said that his motive is ‘not yet known’. Islamic religious extremism is a reasonable guess, given that Rushdie has been living under the shadow of an Iranian fatwa since 1989 when the regime ordered Rushdie’s death over his work The Satanic Verses published in 1988.

Ordering Muslims to murder an author over a ‘blasphemous’ text is certainly an act of regressive barbarism that many, particularly in New York, assumed that the world had moved on from. Despite the current Iranian government apparently ‘distancing’ itself from the fatwa, a religious foundation, The Iranian Revolutionary 15th Khordad Foundation, upped the bounty on Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million and the regime did nothing to stop it. Other fundraisers were added, each offering hundreds of thousands for Rushdie’s murder – this included $600,000 by the state-run media.

Rushdie is an Indian-born British and American national (now 75) who infuriated the then-Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini by disrespecting Islam and its prophet during his writings – something Rushdie is perfectly entitled to do. Fatwas can only be reversed by the person who made them, which is a problem because Khomeini died in 1989. That said, Iran has done little to dissuade Iranian Muslims from persuing the fatwa with comments that it would ‘neither support nor hinder’ their efforts.

While the Left in the West harp on about ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’, there is not much of it in the Islamic world. Rushdie’s book remains banned in many nations, including his home. Book burning by Muslims took place in various cities such as West Yorkshire and other locations in the UK, much to the shock of a nation used to upholding free speech and religious tolerance.

Rushdie wrote of the backlash, seeking to explain the behaviour:

‘A powerful tribe of cleric has taken over Islam. These are contemporary Thought Police. They have turned Muhammad into a perfect being, his life into a perfect life, his revelation into the unambiguous, clear event it originally was not. Powerful taboos have been erected. One may not discuss Muhammad as if he were human, with human virtues and weaknesses. One may not discuss the growth of Islam as a historical phenomenon, as an ideology born out of its time. These are the taboos against which The Satanic Verses has transgressed.’

In 1991, Hitoshi Igarashi – a Japanese translator and scholar of Persian and Arabic history who worked on The Satanic Verses – was stabbed to death. His Italian counterpart, Ettore Capriolo was also stabbed in the same year by an Iranian man but survived. The Norwegian publisher was shot three times in 1993, with William Nygaard surviving the attack. The ruthlessness with which religious figures upheld the direction to murder those involved with the work forced Rushdie into a decade of hiding. It turned his life into a hellish experience of constant moving, identity changes, and secrecy.

Islamic violence against the author continued for many years and killed dozens of people. This included the planting of bombs outside bookshops in London.

Rushdie is not the only author targeted over blasphemy accusations. French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo found itself the target of three terrorist attacks, with 12 people dying in the 2015 attack after a pair of Islamic gunmen entered the magazine head office and fired on staff while shouting, ‘Allahu akbar!’ Despite the world originally coming together in shock at the display of religious extremism silencing a French publication in what is often considered the ‘home of liberty’, many in the Western media were quick to blame the publication for ‘offending’ the Islamic world. It marked the beginning of the end for the defence of Western free speech, which has increasingly found itself bowing to censorship – classified as ‘hate speech’ – and silenced by social media giants that are part-owned by prominent Islamic businessmen.

When the West fails to protect authors like Salman Rushdie – they fail all of us. Protecting free speech starts with ensuring that every person’s right to an opinion is sacred. Instead, we find Western governments, including in Australia, eyeing digital censorship as a shortcut to protect fringe activists and political careers. Unpopular ideas are fenced off from debate, while the victims of government directives are erased from social media.

We are entering a dangerous time for those who choose to dissent.

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