Salman Rushdie’s assailant was primed by a lethal, globalized narrative of intolerance triggered by Khomeini’s 1989 call for death for blasphemy against Islam, bolstered by weak, deluded Western liberals

Kunwar Khuldune ShahidAug 15, 2022 12:49 pm IDT

New Jersey-based 24-year-old Hadi Matar, who stabbed Salman Rushdie in New York state on Friday, was not even born when “The Satanic Verses” was written. He is unlikely ever to have seen a copy of the allegorical book, deemed sacrilegious against Islam, since he would probably have been told that reading blasphemous material means committing the same heresy that makes ‘culprits’ like Rushdie wajib-ul-qatl (liable to be murdered).