Author Salman Rushdie attacked on lecture stage in New York

The writer Salman Rushdie, who for years was the target of deaths threats from Iran, was stabbed Friday at a conference in New York state.

Rushdie, the controversial writer whose book “The Satanic Verses” sent him undercover out of fear for his life, was preparing to speak at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York when a man rushed the stage around 10:45 a.m., attacked him and an interviewer and then started to stab the 75-year-old author.

“He crept up real fast behind him with a short-bladed black knife that he immediately then — the first attack was to his throat on the right side,” Carter Byham, 52, told The Times.

Byham was sitting in the third row and noticed a crouching man in black come from an alleyway to the right of the stage. The man came around behind Rushdie to attack, Byham said.

“Rushdie knocked him off with his arm, stood up, then [the man] went to [Rushdie’s] chest,” Byham said. “Then the moderator tackled the guy.”

Byham said the whole attack lasted about 10 seconds and people rushed the stage to come to Rushdie’s aid.

“I saw Rushdie sitting up holding his neck, pool of blood around him,” Byham said, near tears.

New York State Police said that Rushdie was stabbed in the neck and taken by helicopter to a nearby hospital. His condition was not immediately known. Rushdie was at the Chautauqua Institution on Friday to talk with Henry Reese about “the United States as asylum for writers and other artists in exile and as a home for freedom of creative expression,” according to the institution’s website.

Reese, who was also attacked and suffered minor head injuries, founded “City of Asylum,” an organization that provides sanctuary in Pittsburgh to writers facing persecution.

The Chautauqua Institution, a community that offers lectures and arts programming throughout the summer, said it cancelled the rest of its Friday events.

“We ask for your prayers for Salman Rushdie and Henry Reese, and patience as we fully focus on coordinating with police officials following a tragic incident at the Amphitheater today,” they said in a statement.

The suspect who attacked Rushdie was immediately arrested by a state trooper who was on scene, according to the police. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said that they would be releasing more information about the attacker soon.

“He is alive. He has been transported, airlifted to safety,” Hochul said at a press conference, adding that Chautauqua is a “tranquil, rural” community.

She commended a state police officer for saving Rushdie’s life.

Witness Kathleen Jones said the attacker wore black, with a black mask on as well.

“We thought perhaps it was part of a stunt to show that there’s still a lot of controversy around this author. But it became evident in a few seconds” that it wasn’t, she said.

PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel said the literary free speech organization was “reeling from shock and horror at word of a brutal, premeditated attack” against Rushdie, its former president.

Rushdie’s life first came under threat in 1989, when Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini placed a fatwa on him over “The Satanic Verses,” a book inspired by the life of the prophet Muhammad.

The book caused an uproar in many Muslim communities and Khomeini called it blasphemy, saying it was “against Islam, the Prophet and the Koran” when he ordered Rushdie’s death. He offered a $1-million reward for Rushdie’s killer. Khomeini died in 1989.

After the fatwa was ordered, the writer went into hiding, moving constantly and always remaining protected by a bodyguard.

The 1989 fatwa was no idle threat. In 1991, Hitoshi Igarashi, 44, a Japanese professor who translated “The Satanic Verses” into Japanese, was found stabbed to death. No one was arrested for the killing.

An Italian translator of the book was also attacked in 1991 by an Iranian man who stabbed him repeatedly.

The Iranian government in 1998 said it no longer backed the fatwa and Rushdie moved out of hiding to New York City.

“The battle chose me, I didn’t choose it,” Rushdie told The Times in 2012 about the fatwa.

“On the one side there’s almost everything I value most: liberty, art, imaginative freedom, tolerance. And on the other side there’s bigotry, intolerance, violence, a kind of religious fascism,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.