{"id":2340592,"date":"2024-09-13T08:30:59","date_gmt":"2024-09-13T12:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/salman-rushdie-confronts-his-would-be-assassin\/"},"modified":"2024-09-13T08:37:58","modified_gmt":"2024-09-13T12:37:58","slug":"salman-rushdie-confronts-his-would-be-assassin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/salman-rushdie-confronts-his-would-be-assassin\/","title":{"rendered":"Salman Rushdie Confronts His Would-Be Assassin"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">12<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fsalman-rushdie-confronts-his-would-be-assassin%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2340592&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>**Summary of &#8220;Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder&#8221; by Salman Rushdie**<\/p>\n<p>In &#8220;Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder,&#8221; Salman \u200dRushdie recounts his experience surviving an \u2063assassination attempt in August 2022. The attack occurred during \u2062a speaking engagement \u200cat the Chautauqua Institution, where Rushdie was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/former-us-attorney-bill-mcswain-declares-bid-for-governor-of-pennsylvania\/\" title=\"Former US Attorney Bill McSwain Declares Bid for Governor of Pennsylvania\">stabbed multiple times<\/a> by an assailant identified only \u2063as &#8220;A.&#8221; Though he sustained serious \u200binjuries, he survived due to\u2063 the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/booster-shots-may-trigger-stroke-incidents-according-to-cdc-and-fda\/\" title=\"Booster Shots May Trigger Stroke Incidents, According to CDC and FDA\">prompt medical attention<\/a> he\u2064 received and \u2062the outpouring of support\u200b from family, \u2064friends,\u200c and admirers.<\/p>\n<p>The book explores\u2064 themes such as free speech, personal mortality, \u2064and the impact of cultural and ideological conflict. Rushdie reflects\u2063 on his lifelong advocacy \u200bfor writers&#8217; safety, pointing out the irony that he was attacked while discussing such issues. He critiques individuals and organizations that distanced themselves from him during his earlier trials \u2064surrounding the\u200d controversy of his novel &#8220;The Satanic Verses,&#8221; particularly highlighting the \u200dinconsistent\u200c support he received throughout his career.<\/p>\n<p>In\u2063 his reflections, Rushdie\u200d engages in a hypothetical debate with his assailant about honesty, the\u200b nature of hate, and the ideological motivations behind the attack. He contemplates how such threats to his life have influenced not only his personal narrative but also the broader discourse on literature, freedom, and identity in a complex world. The narrative \u200dis infused with \u2062Rushdie&#8217;s signature style, blending humor with poignant observations about life and \u2064death, and ultimately celebrates resilience \u200band the healing power of community love.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The first thing you notice when picking up <em>Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder<\/em>, Salman Rushdie&rsquo;s account of surviving an assassination attempt two years ago, is the photo. The iconic image of the legendary writer &mdash; eyebrows cocked gently, lips slightly upturned in that impish smile concealing his razor-sharp wit &mdash; has now been augmented by a new feature: a darkened glasses lens over his right eye, which his assailant punctured with his eponymous knife.<\/p>\n<p>Rushdie emerged bloodied, injured, but alive from the attack in August 2022 at New York&rsquo;s Chautauqua Institution, a writer&rsquo;s paradise, after an Islamist born in New Jersey to Lebanese parents &mdash; to whom the author refers only as &ldquo;A.&rdquo; for assailant, or assassin &mdash; stormed the lightly protected stage during Rushdie&rsquo;s remarks and stabbed him more than a dozen times in the stomach, neck, eye, chest, and thigh.<\/p>\n<p>A. and Rushdie were swarmed onstage, and first <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/tucson-residents-ordered-to-shelter-in-place-following-chemical-spill\/\" title=\"Tucson Residents Ordered To Shelter In Place Following Chemical Spill\">responders managed<\/a> to medevac the author by helicopter to a Pennsylvania hospital, where his life hung in the balance for a full day. His account of that mystical time of semiconsciouness is vintage Rushdie: &ldquo;The reality of my books &mdash; oh, call it magic realism if you must &mdash; is now the actual reality in which I&rsquo;m living. Maybe my books had been building that bridge for decades, and now the miraculous could cross it.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>His wife, the poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths, whom Rushdie credits for his survival, as well as his children flocked to the hospital to aid in his recovery. Thousands of well-wishers wrote to him; one week after the attack, hundreds gathered in front of the New York Public Library to exhibit their admiration and support &ldquo;I have no doubt,&rdquo; he writes, &ldquo;that all the love coming toward me &mdash; the love of strangers as well as family and friends &mdash; did a great deal to help me come through.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>A lifelong campaigner for the sanctity of free speech, Rushdie notes drily at the outset of the book how &ldquo;I was attacked and almost killed by a young man with a knife just after I came out on stage &hellip; to talk about the importance of keeping writers safe from harm.&rdquo; After the 1989 fatwa imposed upon him by the Ayatollah Khomeini, following his publication of <em>The Satanic Verses<\/em>, much &mdash; but not all &mdash; of the literary world leapt to his defense. Rushdie hasn&rsquo;t forgotten the perfidies of Jimmy Carter, Germaine Greer, and Roald Dahl, among many others, who &ldquo;joined forces with the Islamist attack to say what a bad person I was.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>To this list of cowards, we might add Rachel Kushner, Teju Cole, and Michael Ondaatje, who boycotted, on the spurious grounds of &ldquo;cultural intolerance,&rdquo; PEN America&rsquo;s 2015 gala, which was dedicated to the memories of the courageous Charlie Hebdo writers and editors. More recently, PEN, to whose presidency Rushdie was elected in 2004, flopped even more spectacularly when activist writers dissatisfied by the organization&rsquo;s insufficiently anti-Israel stridency managed to cancel its 2024 award and gala. PEN is an organization of writers against writing, evidently.<\/p>\n<p>But Rushdie overcame the initial shock and terror of the fatwa. &ldquo;The only way I could stop looking, to others, like some sort of walking time bomb,&rdquo; he reckoned,&rdquo; was to behave, frequently and in public, as if there was nothing to be frightened of.&rdquo; He was of course accompanied by bodyguards, but he maintained an active life in New York society, the notoriety of Khomeini&rsquo;s decree boosting his profile and juicing his book sales. He famously took a victory lap by appearing on &ldquo;Curb Your Enthusiasm&rdquo; in 2017 to demonstrate hilariously to Larry David, who&rsquo;d been targeted by his own fictional fatwa, the sex appeal that a death sentence can confer. More than 30 years after <em>The Satanic Verses<\/em> was published, Rushdie reasonably figured he was out of the woods, and his security detail dwindled. Then came Chautauqua.<\/p>\n<p>Following the attack, it became clear that A. had &ldquo;read barely two pages of my writing and watched a couple of YouTube videos of me, and that was all he needed.&rdquo; The assailant also referred to Rushdie in a subsequent interview as &ldquo;disingenuous,&rdquo; and the author fantasizes about challenging his attacker in person in an extended meditation on the term &ldquo;disingenuous.&rdquo; &ldquo;In American,&rdquo; the fictional A. tells Rushdie, &ldquo;many people pretend to be honest, but they wear masks and lie.&rdquo; The assailant ultimately agrees that &ldquo;disingenuous behavior deserves death.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>They proceed to debate Muslim theology, language and translation, culture, and love. &ldquo;You are hated by two billion people,&rdquo; A. informs Rushdie. &ldquo;How must that feel, to be so hated?&rdquo; Rushdie fruitlessly pleads his case, noting his activism on behalf of a mosque sited at Ground Zero, his opposition to the Indian government&rsquo;s Hindu nationalism, and his expression of sympathy for Kashmiri Muslims. To no avail: &ldquo;We know who you are,&rdquo; A. states. &ldquo;If you think you can win us over, then you are a fool.&rdquo; Rushdie&rsquo;s invocations of Bertrand Russell, Hans Christian Andersen, and Jodi Picoult come to naught.<\/p>\n<p>The author shelves these confrontational fantasies until they threaten to become real. A. vacillates on pleading guilty, and the specter looms of Rushdie testifying against him in court, much <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/shorts\/RHWI9ySN7iA?app=desktop\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">as Samuel Beckett confronted his own attacker in a Paris courtroom<\/a>. He imagines, again, what he would say in court, and concludes, sensibly, that he would say: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care about you, or the ideology that you claim to represent, and which you represent so poorly. I have my life, and my work, and there are people who love me. I care about those things.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Along the way, Rushdie confronts his own mortality &mdash; and that of his literary friends and contemporaries. Martin Amis dies of esophageal cancer, as does Milan Kundera. Paul Auster announces he&rsquo;s suffering from lung cancer. &ldquo;Death was showing up at the wrong addresses,&rdquo; Rushdie laments.<\/p>\n<p>Readers will rejoice that <em>Knife<\/em> is replete with Rushdie&rsquo;s trademark literary flourishes &mdash; the assassin&rsquo;s &ldquo;fake name constructed out of the real names of well-known Shia Muslim extremists,&rdquo; &ldquo;what I call [Mr. A] in the privacy of my home is my business;&rdquo; &ldquo;<em>I&rsquo;m plunging my assassin sharpness into your neck. Feel that?<\/em>;&rdquo; the 9\/11 airplanes &ldquo;slashed like deadly blades into the bodies of their targets, the Twin Towers.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>In characteristic fashion, Rushdie meditates extensively on his title term, &ldquo;knife.&rdquo; &ldquo;The knife had severed me from this world, cut me brutally away, and placed me in this screaming bed,&rdquo; he laments, mid-recovery. He confesses to having &ldquo;thought a lot about The Knife as an idea&rdquo;: as a tool (kitchen), a helper (Swiss Army), a facilitator of ritual (wedding cake), and as a conceptual aid (Occam&rsquo;s razor). &ldquo;It is morally neutral,&rdquo; he concludes. &ldquo;It is the misuse of knives that is immoral.&rdquo; He also comes to realize that &ldquo;language was my knife&rdquo; and that he&rsquo;s better than most at rhetorical skirmishes, if not the physical kind.<\/p>\n<p>Some details should have been omitted from Rushdie&rsquo;s account of his recovery. Difficulties in physical therapy, the particulars of his finger tendons, and unrelated prostate and urinary issues seem at once too personal and too picayune for a book of such elevated tone. Then, too, random potshots at &ldquo;bigoted revisionism&rdquo; in Florida are badly misplaced.<\/p>\n<p>But ultimately, Rushdie reminds us that humanity contains multitudes. &ldquo;We contain within ourselves both the possibility of murdering an old stranger for almost no reason &hellip; and we also contain the antidote to that disease &mdash; courage, selflessness, the willingness to risk oneself to help that old stranger lying on the ground.&rdquo; May this (yes!) <em>living<\/em> legend continue for many years to remind us of our better angels and to instruct us how to channel them.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Michael M. Rosen is an attorney and writer in Israel and an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Reach him at michaelmrosen@yahoo.com.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first thing that stands out when you pick up &#8220;Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder,&#8221; Salman Rushdie&#8217;s reflection on surviving an assassination attempt two years prior, is the photograph. The well-known image of the esteemed author\u2014his eyebrows raised slightly and a mischievous smile hinting at his sharp intellect\u2014now features a new detail: a darkened lens over his right eye, which was stabbed by his attacker\u2019s knife. <\/p>\n<p>Rushdie emerged from the August 2022 assault at New York&#8217;s Chautauqua Institution bloodied and injured but alive after being attacked by an Islamist man born in New Jersey to Lebanese parents, whom Rushdie refers to simply as \u201cA.\u201d During Rushdie\u2019s speech, A. rushed onto the stage and stabbed him multiple times in various parts of his body. Following the attack, first responders airlifted Rushdie to a Pennsylvania hospital where he fought for his life for an entire day. His description of that surreal period of semi-consciousness is quintessentially Rushdie: \u201cThe reality of my books\u2014oh, call it magic realism if you must\u2014is now the actual reality in which I\u2019m living. Maybe my books had been building that bridge for decades, and now the miraculous could cross it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His wife, poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths\u2014whom he credits with aiding in his survival\u2014and their children gathered at the hospital to support him during recovery. Thousands sent messages of goodwill; just one week post-attack, hundreds assembled outside the New York Public Library to show their admiration and solidarity with him. He reflects on this outpouring of love: \u201cI have no doubt&#8230;that all the love coming toward me\u2014the love from strangers as well as family and friends\u2014did a great deal to help me come through.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As a lifelong advocate for free speech, Rushdie dryly notes at the beginning of his book how he was attacked shortly after taking the stage to discuss writer safety issues. Following Khomeini&#8217;s 1989 fatwa against him due to &#8220;The Satanic Verses,&#8221; much\u2014but not all\u2014of literary society rallied behind him; however, he hasn\u2019t forgotten those like Jimmy Carter and Roald Dahl who criticized him instead.<\/p>\n<p>He also mentions writers such as Rachel Kushner who boycotted PEN America\u2019s 2015 gala dedicated to Charlie Hebdo victims under dubious claims of cultural intolerance. More recently, PEN faced backlash from activist writers unhappy with its stance on Israel leading them to cancel its upcoming award ceremony.<\/p>\n<p>Despite initially grappling with fear following Khomeini&#8217;s decree\u2014which made him appear like \u201csome sort of walking time bomb\u201d\u2014Rushdie managed to maintain an active social life in New York while accompanied by bodyguards; ironically enhancing both his profile and book sales due to heightened notoriety.<\/p>\n<p>After Chautauqua changed everything again for him\u2014a realization struck that A., having read only two pages of Rushdie\u2019s work along with some YouTube videos about him felt justified enough in attacking based on limited knowledge.<\/p>\n<p>In imagined confrontations with A., they debate various topics including theology and culture while A.\u2019s disdainful remarks highlight how deeply entrenched hatred can be despite any attempts at understanding or reconciliation from Rushdie\u2019s side.<\/p>\n<p>As he navigates thoughts about mortality\u2014including losses among literary peers like Martin Amis\u2014it becomes clear that &#8220;Knife&#8221; showcases not only personal reflections but also broader themes regarding humanity&#8217;s capacity for both violence and compassion.<\/p>\n<p>While some details about physical therapy may feel overly intimate or trivial within this context\u2014and certain critiques seem misplaced\u2014the essence remains powerful: humanity embodies contradictions capable both of harm yet also profound kindness towards others.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately through these meditations on survival amidst adversity may serve as reminders urging us towards our better selves\u2014a legacy worth preserving long into future generations<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":751,"featured_media":2340593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Book-Cover-Featured-Image-14.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[34943,40811,40810],"class_list":["post-2340592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-assassination-attempt","tag-literary-confrontation","tag-salman-rushdie"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Book-Cover-Featured-Image-14.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2340592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/751"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2340592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2340592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2340593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2340592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2340592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2340592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}