Salman Rushdie attacker says “surprised” author survived

 Salman Rushdie told the New York Post on a lecture stage the man charged with stabbing said that he was “surprised” to learn the accomplished author had survived the attack.

Hadi Matar, 24, told the tabloid that when I heard he survived, I was surprised, I guess, which said they held a video interview with the jailed suspect. He attacked their beliefs, the belief systems and he’s someone who attacked Islam.” 

Matar said that with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard he was not in contact. Through a tweet earlier this year, he also said that he had learned Rushdie would speak at the Chautauqua Institution’s literary series. 

Moreover, Matar told the paper that of Rushdie’s novel he had “read a couple pages”. Also, he said to the author that “I don’t like the person. However, I don’t think he’s a very good person”. “I don’t like him. I don’t like him very much.” 

By the 1989 edict or fatwa, the suspected assailant, who has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder charges, did not say whether he was inspired. This was issued by Iran’s former supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who ordered Muslims to kill the writer for what he deemed the blasphemous nature of the book “The Satanic Verses.” 

“I respect the ayatollah. I think he’s a great person. Matar who according to the Post was advised by his lawyer not to discuss the issue said that’s as far as I will say about that”.  

However, Matar, who is charged with attempted murder and assault, told the Post that the day before the attack he took a bus to Buffalo and then took a Lyft to Chautauqua, about 40 miles away. “I was hanging around pretty much. I was just outside the whole time, he told the paper, “Just walking around, Not doing anything in particular”. 

Before Rushdie’s planned talk he bought a pass to the Chautauqua Institution grounds and then slept in the grass the night. 

Matar was born in the U.S. but in Lebanon holds dual citizenship, where his parents were born. In interviews his mother has told reporters that Matar came back changed from a visit to see his father in Lebanon in 2018. After that, she said, he became moody and withdrew from his family. 

Rushdie was set to deliver a talk as part of a lecture series last Friday, when a man stormed the stage and stabbed him several times in the neck and abdomen. To a nearby hospital Rushdie was airlifted, where for life-threatening injuries he underwent emergency surgery.

According to his agent, in the attack Friday, Rushdie, 75, suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and an eye. His condition has improved and he is on the road to recovery said by his agent named Andrew Wylie. 

Matar told the Post that of Rushdie speaking he had watched YouTube videos, and thus called the author “disingenuous.”

Matar’s mother, Lebanese-born Silvana Fardos of Fairview, on Monday, New Jersey, described Matar as “a moody introvert” who became increasingly fixated on Islam, in an interview with Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper after visiting Lebanon to see his estranged father. 

Source:- https://newsmktcap.com/salman-rushdie-attacker-says-surprised-author-survived/