Sean Zanni
Iranian newspapers have celebrated the assault on Salman Rushdie with the Kayhan newspaper—whose editor-in-chief is appointed by Iran’s Supreme Chief Ali Khamenei—sending his assailant “a thousand bravos.”
Rushdie, who has been the topic of a fatwa by Iran since 1989 following the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, is on a ventilator and vulnerable to dropping an eye fixed after he was stabbed at a literary occasion in western New York.
Iran’s authorities is but to touch upon the assault however a number of of its newspapers have applauded the suspect, who police have recognized as 24-year-old Hadi Matar from Fairview, New Jersey.
“A thousand bravos... to the courageous and dutiful one that attacked the apostate and evil Salman Rushdie in New York,” the Kayhan newspaper acknowledged. “The hand of the person who tore the neck of God's enemy should be kissed.”
The Khorasan each day ran with a headline that mentioned “Devil on the trail to hell.”
The late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued the fatwa, or non secular edict, on the British-Indian creator, calling The Satanic Verses blasphemous and forcing him into hiding for years. The fifteenth Khordad Basis providing a $2.7 million reward to anybody who carried out Khomeini‘s fatwa after which growing it to $3.3 million in 2012.
The Asr Iran information web site was one other that appeared on Rushdie’s assault favorably, utilizing an typically cited quote by Khamenei that mentioned the “arrow” shot by the previous chief “will at some point hit the goal.”
Police have but to determine a motive for the assault.