Iran’s main ultra-conservative daily, Kayhan, congratulated this Saturday the man who stabbed the world-famous British writer Salman Rushdie, author of ‘Satanic Verses’, the target of a fatwa in the United States for more than 30 years.
“Congratulations to this brave and duty-conscious man who attacked the apostate and vicious Salman Rushdie,” writes the newspaper, whose head is appointed by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Let us kiss the hand of the one who tore the neck of the enemy of God with a knife,” the text continues.
Salman Rushdie was attacked in the neck and abdomen while standing on the stage of an amphitheater at a cultural center in Chautauqua, upstate New York. According to his agent, he was placed on a ventilator and he could lose an eye.
The “Devil’s Neck”
Iranian authorities have so far not made an official statement on the assassination attempt on the 75-year-old intellectual. Following the official line, all Iranian media have called Salman Rushdie an “apostate”, except for Etemad, a reformist newspaper. The Iran newspaper, a state newspaper, estimated that “the devil’s neck” had been “hit by a knife.”
“I will not shed tears for a writer who denounces Muslims and Islam with infinite hatred and contempt,” Mohammad Marandi, adviser to the negotiating team on the nuclear file, wrote in a tweet. “Rushdie is a pawn of empire posing as a post-colonial novelist,” he added.
“Isn’t it strange that as we get closer to a possible nuclear agreement, the United States claims that an attack on Bolton (former White House national security adviser) was planned … and then let it happen,” he asks.
Salman Rushdie had set parts of the Muslim world ablaze with the September 1988 publication of the “Satanic Verses,” prompting the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, to issue a “fatwa” in 1989 calling for his assassination.
Source: BFM TV
