Iran denied any connection to the assailant of British novelist Salman Rushdie on Monday, but condemned Rushdie for “insulting” Islam in his work “The Satanic Verses.”
No one has the right to blame the Islamic Republic of Iran, said foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanani in Tehran’s first official response to Friday’s stabbing.
“We do not hold anybody other than Salman Rushdie and his followers accountable for this assault,” he stated during his weekly news conference in Tehran. Salman Rushdie has exposed himself to the fury and rage of the people by disrespecting the holy things of Islam and breaking the red lines of more than 1.5 billion Muslims and all adherents of heavenly faiths.
Assault against Rushdie is an assault on freedom of speech.
Rushdie, 75, was put on a ventilator with numerous knife wounds after an assault at a literary event in upstate New York on Friday.
Andrew Wylie, a literary agent, said on Sunday that Salman Rushdie was “on the path to recovery.” He said that the author was taken off the ventilator on Saturday and was able to speak and laugh, but warned that although he was “heading in the right path,” his rehabilitation would be lengthy and he may lose an eye.
Rushdie’s son Zafar Rushdie stated in a statement on Sunday that his father remained in critical condition after sustaining life-threatening injuries. He added that his father’s typical combative and rebellious sense of humor was unaffected.
The novel’s depiction of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed incited Iranian authorities in 1989 to demand for the author’s assassination due to the novel’s depiction of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed.
Hadi Matar, 24, from New Jersey, was pulled to the ground by staff and audience members before being brought into jail by police.
Later, he was arraigned and pled not guilty to attempted murder charges.
In 1989, the then-supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a religious edict, or fatwa, demanding Muslims to execute Salman Rushdie for the obscene character of “The Satanic Verses.”
Khomeini died shortly afterwards, and Iranian officials have subsequently paid little attention to the author, although the fatwa has never been removed formally. Several book translators have been assaulted.
The assault on Rushdie occurred at a delicate time in Iran’s negotiations with world powers about salvaging a 2015 nuclear agreement abandoned by the United States in 2018 in exchange for the suspension of severe U.S. sanctions.
Monday, the foreign ministry spokesperson Kanani emphasized that Rushdie, not Iran, was responsible for the assault upon him.
Kanani commented on the book as follows: “Not only Iran and the Islamic Republic were outraged by this wrong behavior at that time; the outrage was widespread. Millions of individuals in Arab, Islamic, and non-Islamic nations responded angrily. On the one hand, condemning the actions of the assailant is entirely inconsistent with excusing the actions of others who denigrate holy and Islamic things.”
After more than 30 years after its release, the book and its author continue to be highly provocative in Iran.
When approached by AFP on Saturday to comment on the incident, Iranians visiting Tehran’s book market did not overtly denounce the stabbing, which has provoked fury in the West.
The ultraconservative Kayhan daily, whose editor-in-chief is handpicked by the current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, welcomed the assault.
“Bravo to this gutsy and duty-conscious guy who assaulted Salman Rushdie in New York,” it said.
The Iranian media, with the exception of the reformist daily Etemad, similarly described Rushdie as a “apostate.”
One Iranian newspaper said that the “neck of the devil” had been “shaved with a razor.”
Sunday, U.S. Secretary of Official Antony Blinken slammed Iranian state media for “gloating” over the incident, describing it as “disgusting.”