Tehran, Iran –
Iranians reacted with praise and concern Saturday over the attack on novelist Salman Rushdie, the target of a decades-old fatwa by the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini calling for his death.
It is unclear why Rushdie’s attacker, identified by police as Hadi Matar of Fairview, New Jersey, stabbed the perpetrator as he prepared to speak at an event in western New York on Friday. Iran’s theocratic government and its state media have not assigned any motive for the attack.
But in Tehran, some willing to speak to The Associated Press hailed an attack on a writer they believe tarnishes the Islamic faith with his 1988 book “The Satanic Verses.” On the streets of Iran’s capital, images of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini still stare at passers-by.
“I don’t know Salman Rushdie, but I’m glad to hear that he was attacked because he insulted Islam,” said Reza Amiri, a 27-year-old delivery man. “This is the fate of anyone who insults the sanctities.”
Others, however, raised concerns that Iran could further isolate itself from the world as tensions remain high over its tattered nuclear deal.
“I feel like those who did it are trying to isolate Iran,” said Mahshid Barati, a 39-year-old geography teacher. “This will negatively affect relations with many, including Russia and China.”
Khomeini, failing health in the last year of his life after the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s decimated the country’s economy, issued the fatwa on Rushdie in 1989. The Islamic edict came amid a violent uproar in the Muslim world over the novel. , which some saw as blasphemous making suggestions about the life of the Prophet Muhammad.
“I would like to inform all fearless Muslims in the world that the author of the book entitled ‘Satanic Verses’… as well as the publishers who knew its contents, are sentenced to death,” Khomeini said in February. 1989, according to Radio Tehran.
He added: “Whoever dies doing this will be considered a martyr and will go straight to heaven.”
Early on Saturday, Iranian state media highlighted a man identified as having been killed while trying to carry out the fatwa. Lebanese citizen Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh was killed when a book bomb exploded prematurely in a London hotel on August 3, 1989, just over 33 years ago.
Matar, the man who attacked Rushdie on Friday, was born in the United States to Lebanese parents who immigrated from the southern village of Yaroun, the city’s mayor, Ali Tehfe, told the AP.
Yaroun is only kilometers (miles) away from Israel. In the past, the Israeli army has fired on what it described as Iranian-backed Hezbollah Shi’ite militia positions in the area.
On newsstands on Saturday, front-page headlines offered their own take on the attack. Hardline Vatan-e Emrouz’s main story covered what he described as: “A knife to Salman Rushdie’s neck.” The headline of the reformist newspaper Etemad asked: “Salman Rushdie on the brink of death?”
The conservative newspaper Khorasan published a large image of Rushdie on a stretcher, with a blaring headline: “Satan on the road to hell.”
But the 15th Khordad Foundation, which posted the more than $3 million reward for Rushdie, was silent at the start of the work week. Employees there declined to immediately comment to the AP, referring questions to an official who was not in the office.
The foundation, whose name refers to the 1963 protests against the former Shah of Iran by supporters of Khomeini, generally focuses on providing aid to the disabled and others affected by war. But like other foundations known as “bonyads” in Iran, funded in part by confiscated assets from the shah’s time, they often serve the political interests of the country’s hardliners.
Reformists in Iran, those who want to slowly liberalize the country’s Shiite theocracy from within and have better relations with the West, have sought to distance the country’s government from the edict. In particular, the foreign minister to reformist President Mohammad Khatami said in 1998 that “the government disassociates itself from and does not support any reward that has been offered in this regard.”
Rushdie slowly began to reemerge in public life around this time. But some in Iran have never forgotten the fatwa against them.
On Saturday, Mohammad Mahdi Movaghar, a 34-year-old Tehran resident, described having a “good feeling” after seeing Rushdie attack.
“This is nice and shows that those who insult the holy things of us Muslims, in addition to punishment in the hereafter, will also be punished in this world at the hands of people,” he said.
However, others worried that the attack, regardless of why it was carried out, could damage Iran as it tries to negotiate its nuclear deal with world powers.
Since then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018, Tehran has seen its rial currency crash and its economy tank. Meanwhile, Tehran is enriching uranium now closer to weapons-grade levels than ever amid a series of attacks across the Middle East.
“It will make Iran more isolated,” warned former Iranian diplomat Mashallah Sefatzadeh.
While fatwas can be revised or revoked, Iran’s current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who took office after Khomeini, has never done so.
“The decision made on Salman Rushdie remains valid,” Khamenei said in 1989. “As I said, this is a bullet for which there is a target. It has been shot. One day, sooner or later, it will hit the target.”
As recently as February 2017, Khamenei laconically responded to this question put to him: “Is the fatwa on the apostasy of the damned liar Salman Rushdie still in force? What is the duty of a Muslim in this regard?”
Khamenei replied: “The decree is as issued by Imam Khomeini.”
Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Mehdi Fattahi in Tehran, Iran, and Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed to this report.