An Iranian foundation has praised the man who attacked novelist Salman Rushdie last year, leaving him severely injured, and said it will reward him with 1,000 square meters of agricultural land, Iranian state TV reported on Tuesday through its Telegram channel.
“We sincerely thank the brave action of the young American who made Muslims happy by blinding one of Rushdie’s eyes and disabling one of his hands,” Mohammad Esmail Zarei, secretary of the Foundation to Implement Imam Khomeini’s Fatwas said.
“Rushdie is now no more than living dead and to honor this brave action, about 1,000 square meters of agricultural land will be donated to the person or any of his legal representatives,” Zarei added.
🎗The Islamic Regime of Iran Gives the Terrorist Attacker Salman Rushdi a Thousand Meters of "Fertile" Land
Mohammad Ismail Zarei, the official of the"Secretariat of the Khomeini Fatwa Implementation Network on the Murder of #SalmanRushdie"
appreciated & expressed satisfaction👇 pic.twitter.com/fGTpgEURB2— IRAN NEWS (@IRANNNEWS) February 21, 2023
According to commentators, this kind of behavior encourages further attacks against people such as Salman Rushdie.
Iran sanctions
The statement comes after the Council of the European Union imposed new sanctions on Iranian officials and entities for their role in the violent crackdown against public protests in the Islamic republic.
The Council of the #EU🇪🇺 has imposed new #sanctions on #Iranian🇮🇷 officials and entities for their role in the violent #crackdown against public #protests in the Islamic republic.https://t.co/MhqJmzUXmC
— TVP World (@TVPWorld_com) February 20, 2023
The attack
Rushdie, 75, lost an eye and is unable to use one hand as an aftermath of the assault by a 24-year-old Shi’ite Muslim American from New Jersey on the stage of a literary event held near Lake Erie in western New York in August.
The man accused of attacking the novelist has pleaded not guilty to second-degree attempted murder and assault charges.
Fatwa
The attack came 33 years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran’s supreme leader, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, calling on Muslims to assassinate Rushdie a few months after “The Satanic Verses” was published, as some Muslims saw passages in the novel about the Prophet Muhammad as blasphemous.
Rushdie, who was born in India to a Muslim Kashmiri family, has lived with a bounty on his head and spent nine years in hiding under British police protection.
While Iran’s pro-reform government of President Mohammad Khatami distanced itself from the fatwa in the late 1990s, the multimillion-dollar bounty hanging over Rushdie’s head kept growing and the fatwa was never lifted.
Khomeini’s successor, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was suspended from Twitter in 2019 for saying the fatwa against Rushdie was “irrevocable”.
Source » tvpworld