By Hasse-Nima Golkar

The terrorist attack on August 12, 2022, against Salman Rushdie in New York was nothing more than an attack against freedom of expression as an essential part of human rights.

Iran’s religious-political leader, the great dictator Ayatollah Khomeini, issued on February 14, 1989, a fascist death sentence in the form of a fatwa (religious commandment) against the Indian-British writer Salman Rushdie (born 1947) because of his satirical novel – The Satanic Verses (published in October 1988) – which included speculative sequences about the early life of prophet Muhammad. Khomeini thought that Rushdie’s book was, among other things, a blasphemous crime against monotheism and Islam.

At the time, Salman Rushdie lived in England and was forced to live underground for several years. For security reasons, he later moved to the United States.

According to reports from most international media, Salman Rushdie, was attacked with a knife with multiple blows to the right side of the neck and abdomen on stage during a lecture in Chautauqua, northwest New York. He has undergone surgery and is living with the help of a respiratory apparatus. One of his eyes and liver is severely damaged, and the nerves in his arm are severed.

The police identify the perpetrator as 24-year-old Hadi Matar, a Lebanese resident of New Jersey. It is said that Hadi Matar had a journalist pass that gave him access to the institution’s premises. He is under arrest now.

Hadi Matar has sympathized with Hizballah in Lebanon and the Shia Islamic terror state in Iran. He has posted on social media in support of the fascist “Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps/IRGC.”