Islamists are very violent. The case of Salman Rushdie's attacker

Upstate NY trial begins for radical accused of stabbing ‘Satanic Verses’ author Salman Rushdie

https://nypost.com/2025/02/04/us-news/upstate-ny-trial-begins-for-radical-accused-of-stabbing-satanic-verses-author-salman-rushdie/

The attempted murder trial of the radical who allegedly repeatedly stabbed writer Salman Rushdie at an upstate New York event two years ago is finally set to start Tuesday.

The twice-delayed proceedings are scheduled to begin with jury selection at 9:30 a.m. at the Chautauqua County Courthouse.

Prosecutors said Rushdie, the author of “Satanic Verses,” will take the stand against his accused attacker Hadi Matar, 26, during the trial.

Matar, of New Jersey, allegedly knifed Rushdie at least 10 times during a literary seminar at the Chautauqua Institution in August 2022.

The 77-year-old novelist was left blind in one eye and suffering from nerve and liver damage.

The moderator for the event, Henry Reese, was also wounded in the attack.

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Hadi Matar, 26, is charged with attempted murder and assault in the 2022 attack on author Salman Rushdie upstate. AP

“I don’t think he’s a very good person. I don’t like him,” Matar told The Post about Rushdie in an exclusive jailhouse interview days after the vicious attack.

“He’s someone who attacked Islam, he attacked their beliefs, the belief systems.”

Rushdie spent years in hiding after late Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini put a $3 million bounty on his head in 1989 over “The Satanic Verses,” which Muslims believed disparaged the Prophet Mohammed, calling the book blasphemous. 

Rushdie began emerging from his self-imposed exile in the 1990s, and has since appeared at speaking engagements around the world — including the upstate event.

Matar, who was born in the US and has dual Lebanese citizenship, insisted he allegedly acted alone and only read “like two pages” of the controversial Rushdie novel.

He is also facing separate federal terrorism charges in US District Court in Buffalo, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

Prior to the attack on Rushdie, Matar allegedly took a bus to Buffalo and a Lyft to Chautauqua, where he bought a ticket to the event and slept outside the venue the night before, The Guardian reported.

As Rushdie addressed the crowd, Matar allegedly rushed the stage and stabbed the author before stunned onlookers subdued him and he was arrested by police.

Matar, who has been locked up without bail, pleaded not guilty to the attempted murder and assault charges. He previously turned down a plea deal for a 20-to-life state prison sentence, down from 25 years.

His trial on attempted murder and assault charges has twice been delayed, most recently in October when Matar’s lawyer sought to move the trial to another county.

The attorney, Nathaniel Barone, argued the publicity around the high-profile case and the lack of an Arab American community in the small upstate county meant his client wouldn’t get a fair trial.

That move was denied, clearing the way for the trial to begin this week. 

The proceedings are expected to last one month, with jury selection lasting about two weeks, prosecutors said.

It’s not yet clear when Rushdie will take the stand. 

Rushdie in 2023 wrote about the near-fatal attack in a “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder,” and called it “lucky” that he survived the assault.

“There is such a thing as PTSD, you know,” he told the New Yorker in his first interview after the attack. I’ve found it very, very difficult to write. I sit down to write, and nothing happens. I write, but it’s a combination of blankness and junk, stuff that I write and that I delete the next day.”

By 

Steven Vago and 

 

Jorge Fitz-Gibbon

Published Feb. 4, 2025, 6:00 a.m. ET