Salman Rushdie Stabbed at Upstate N.Y. Lecture, by Man "with Sympathies Toward Iranian Government"

The suspect has apparently just been identified as Hadi Matar; the N.Y. Sun (Joe Marino & Evan Simko-Bednarski) reports,

A New Jersey man with sympathies toward the Iranian government was arrested and accused of stabbing famed novelist Salman Rushdie on Friday, according to law enforcement sources briefed on the investigation….

Sources told The Post that an initial investigation suggests Hadi is sympathetic to the Iranian regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

The talk, at the Chautauqua Institution, was to be on "the United States as asylum for writers and other artists in exile and as a home for freedom of creative expression."

UPDATE [9:22 pm]: "Rushdie is on a ventilator"; "will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged" (N.Y. Times [Jay Root, David Gelles, Elizabeth A. Harris & Julia Jacobs]).

Comments

[Just Eric]

Hoping the charge is only attempted murder, and some condemnation within Islamic world.

[DaivdBehar]

Our enemies arenot hampered by lawyers. We are.

[DaivdBehar]

Had Rushdie defended himself, the lawyer would have arrested, sued, and cancelled him.

[DaivdBehar]

Everyone is on his own. The police, agents of tje prosecutor, generate fines for local government. That is all they do. People were upset at Uvalde. They prevented a husbamd cop from savibg her begging wife. They waited 77 minutes to act. Do not get upset. Thar was not their purpose.

[DaivdBehar]

The attacker should get cashless bail because cash bail is racist.

[DaivdBehar]

Garland, a Harvard indoctrinated lawyer dumbass, should drop the North Korea act. He needs to prosecute and to sue Iranian officials for inducing the attack on Rushdie. I figure a $billion in seized assets should be enough. China has over a $trillion in loans to us. Seize that for the Chinese virus they let loose on our nation.

Garland will never do that. Do you know why? Because he is a lawyer dumbass.

[DaivdBehar]

Iran sent killers after a dissident journalist. They have a bounty out on Pompeo, and on Bolton. One of their servants stabbed Rushdie many times. Garland does nothing about it.

[Bill Falcon]

If so, that is an act of war. I have zero interest with going to war with Iran, but it is. I sincerely hope the govt of Iran has nothing to do with this. It is another reminder of how our foreign policy has long had unintended consequences. Getting rid of a socialist PM to get the Shah in maybe made sense in the days of the cold war to some (and they were wrong but give them the benefit of thinking "international communism" was actually an organized thing) could be a factor in the rise of the current Iranian regime. But again, it is an act of war.

[John F. Carr]

As of 5 PM still in surgery. Long surgery is bad. Not dying within the first couple hours is good.

[AmosArch]

They should arrest some catholic nuns and thoroughly vet them just to make sure they aren't profiling.

[Sarcastr0]

All Samoyeds are dogs. Does that mean we should declare all dogs are Samoyeds?

[Michael P]

No, but when all dogs froth at the mouth and try to bite people, it may be prudent to put them down.

If you really want to extend that metaphor.

[Sarcastr0]

Are you meaning to say *all* Muslims are terrorists?

[Sarcastr0]

And should be 'put down?'

[Currentsitguy]

No, it would be ridiculous to say all Muslims are terrorists, but I don't think it out of the Pale to say Muslims at the moment seem to have a terrorist problem disproportionately large in comparison to other groups.

[Sarcastr0]

I can't really argue with there being a problem if you average across all of Islam, which seems to me to lump in the good with the bad in a way that is not informative with a faith of such diverse practice.
Like if you lumped in Unitarians and Evangelicals, you're going to do some group a disservice.

But the key is not to let that your broad sense effect how you treat individuals how happen to be Muslims - that'd be bigotry.

[Currentsitguy]

Not going to argue that sentiment. Anyone I meet first and foremost is an individual.

At the risk of going political I think the problem in no small part is a direct result of the Saudi Government's tradition of exporting their more radical religious elements and Imams to foreign nations in a effort to maintain peace at home and to prevent any serious threat to the regime from gaining a foothold. The world, in a sense, is their Australia.

[Krayt]

You can't bitch about how evil religion is, then run away and hide when actual examples of why manifest, because the other side of the echo chamber is screetching about buttering them up for votes.

[Sarcastr0]

Great point - if I ever bitched about how evil religion is. I am quite sure I've not done that, since I do not think that.

[FivebySixThree]

however to put it into perspective, they are the social justice warriors of their faith. they just perform the violence themselves whereas those in the West use proxies to harm others

[Sarcastr0]

You seem to be lacking a great deal of perspective. Terrorism is actually a lot worse than being annoying on Tumblr.

[Ed Grinberg]

How about we just stop letting them immigrate here?

[Nisiiko]

Muslims need to be contained to their own historic lands.

[Michael P]

No, I just think your metaphor is terrible.

[Sarcastr0]

Since you don't seem to understand it, I can see why.

If you have a particular argument to make as to why my analogy is bad, I'd be interested in your thoughts.

[Michael P]

The most obvious interpretation is that Muslims are the dogs in your metaphor, and violent jihadists are the Samoyeds.

It's insulting to liken people to other animals, and violent jihad is not determined by birth characteristics.

So I condemn both halves of your metaphor.

[Sarcastr0]

Ah. You don't know the difference between a metaphor and an analogy.

That's on you, chief.

[Michael P]

That difference is irrelevant to your metaphor's flaws.

[Don Nico]

Rushdie has had a fatwa over his head for many years. So at least some Muslims influenced by the ayatollahs were of danger to him.
Beyond that, what is there to say.

[John F. Carr]

I liked the Samoyed I had as a kid. Make it so.

[Sarcastr0]

😀 I grew up with them as well.

[TW]

It seems to me that most of the reasons for why we should avoid unnecessarily using the names of mass shooters apply also to any who commits any other violent crime where they’re likely looking to gain fame, notoriety, and/or recognition.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Is that what you think the motivation was?

[Kazinski]

Even if it was his motivation TW's prescription is meaningless because you can bet Hati Matar is being praised at mosques across Iran today and tomorrow, and if he was looking for public praise or notoriety in was in Iran, not here.

But I don't think that's why TW wants to keep his name quiet.

[Currentsitguy]

Not necessarily his sole motivation, but it's hard to dismiss the $3 Million price on Rushdie's head.

[Bill Falcon]

There should be outrage that a person cannot exercise their right to free speech without being attacked. Of course, the left believes only they decide if you have that right. If someone was attacked while presenting the case to end DIE marxism from being forced down our throats, it would be justified as they were spewing "hate speech."

[Kazinski]

Well let be fair here, this had nothing to do with the left, it's Iran's islamofascist theocracy that is to blame.

When the say death to America they mean left as well as right.

[Ed Grinberg]

Yet, strangely, the U.S. left is no less sympathetic to them (the islamofascists) than the international left. Why is that? I'll tell you why. They too want "death to America."

In the preface to his 1964 book Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism, James Burnham explains that this book grew out of “a set of papers on ‘Liberalism as the Ideology of Western Suicide.’”

“Anti-life” is the name of one of the chapters toward the end of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

What is support for BLM and "defund the police" if not a desire to see your society destroyed?

Look at what's happening to our country today. Look at what Biden & Co. are doing to it. They're slowly & purposefully destroying it. Who needs Iran or North Korea or China or Russia and their nukes, when Democrats are destroying us from within!

[Krayt]

Back ca. 1990 IIRC, when this first started, some bookstores (remember them) chickened out and took the his book off the shelves, after there started to appear auxilliary threats and attacks against bookstores, translators, people at press conferences.

They claimed it was to protect their workers, but it was fear of...wait for it...suing lawyers.

[Krayt]

"Blah blah blah," the lawyer will respond.

What part of "parasite on society, enabling the evil, for profit", don't you understand?

Brave folk stand up to real cancellation, and all you can think to do is justify aiding the murderer cancellers in their goal of silencing? This is censorship, the use of threats and weapons and violence.

"And if you don't go along with it, I will line my pockets with your money!"

[Darth Buckeye]

We cannot make the attacker pay commensurately for the pain and suffering he has inflicted on Rushdie. I pray that God visits perfect justice on the attacker and on anyone who conspired with him (if any).

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

People fighting over religion -- over adult-onset superstition, a belief that fairy tales are true -- is likely the root of this attack. Calls for one or another paltry god to become involved add nothing worthwhile to this situation.

Choose reason. Every time. Be an adult.

Or, at least, please try.

Thank you.

[Currentsitguy]

Sadly, as Mr. Rushdie has just tragically learned, at least among the radical elements, religion can sometimes be a real life Hotel California. No matter how much you try to leave it in the past it stalks you. It's the same reason I fear for the safety of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Malala Yousafzai.

[DaivdBehar]

The attacker was protected and empowered by the scumbag lawyer profession. Rev your profession is 1000 times more toxic than organozed crime. You and your ilk are the font of all evil in this country.

The rev mocks religion . Your have supernatural beliefs, you moron. You impose them on us at the point of a gum you dumbass. See you next Tuesday.

[Krayt]

He did choose reason!

In computer science, it's the GIGO problem: Garbage In, Garbage Out

If a skydaddy looks favorably on you for murdering the skydaddy's political enemies, well, the path is obvious.

The reasonable solution, such as it is, is the religious detente of the First Amendment, where all religions, fearful of others becoming legally ascendant, agree not to use the power of government to pursue that end.

[F.D. Wolf]

The Iranian government should confess its involvement as soon as possible.

The foreign policy geniuses on Team Biden will cite it as more evidence of the need to quickly finalize their glorious nuclear deal with Iran.

[Commenter_XY]

Hadi Matar should be tried for attempted murder. That is what we have here. The video seems pretty clear to me. So are social media postings. Try the man, find him guilty in about 5 nanoseconds, and put his ass in the clink for a couple of decades. After that, if the Feds want a piece, they can try Matar on terror charges while he rots in prison.

I care much less about Matar's religion (Islam, presumably), or Rushdie's politics (the man is a stark raving uber-lib) than I care about our justice system actually meting out justice impartially and fairly.

[Both Sides]

Well said.

[Stephen Lathrop]

So, Khomeini puts out a fatwa, calling for the death of Rushdie. Had that happened ten years ago in the U.S., would that have been a hate crime, or protected speech? How about now? If anything changed, what was it?

[Krayt]

25 years ago it might have been worth a cruise missile or two.

[Ed Grinberg]

Right. Now, we might send them another few pallets of cash.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Khomeini's comments seem sufficiently definite to be punishable solicitation to commit a crime to be punishable under modern first amendment doctrine. They don't seem like they would be an obvious fit for the federal hate crimes statute (18 U.S.C. § 249) or any state equivalents I'm familiar with.

[Jerry B.]

Meanwhile, the Post is covering this heavily, but once it was found that the person killing Muslims in Albuquerque was a Muslim as well, and not a Deplorable, stories about that disappeared immediately.

[Noscitur a sociis]

I just searched google news for "Albuquerque murders" (actually "murdees" because I hit the wrong key) and found post-arrest stories from CNN, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and ABC News, along with a lot of local sources.

[FivebySixThree]

Got to love Twitter. So JK Rowling expresses her support for Mr Rushdie to get better and gets threatened directly on Twitter with "Your next" and Twitter refused to intervene.

Seriously you have to wonder at how tone deaf they can be. They will idly stand by while someone they don't like is threatened with murder.

[Life of Brian]

Seriously you have to wonder at how tone deaf they can be.

I don't have to wonder at all, actually. They started giving up any pretext of evenhandedness somewhere in the vicinity of November 10, 2020.

[Sarcastr0]

Twitter does allow threats like that. Ever read AOC or Warren’s Twitter replies?

To establish a double standard you need to check both sides, chief.

[Michael P]

Found in replies to AOC on Twitter: "Thank you", "This should help", "Ignore the haters", "Love you, AOC". Not found: "You're next", or anything else resembling a threat.

Some of us check the real world, Gaslight0.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Twitter does allow threats like that. Ever read AOC or Warren’s Twitter replies?

I have. None of them have been death threats that Twitter allowed to stand.

[Stephen Lathrop]

FivebySixThree — Standing idly by while people get threatened with murder on the internet is more than something which just happens. On this blog, and across the right-wing generally, it is held akin to a sacred principle. And you will find no shortage of sage legal opinion to advise that tolerance for those threats is critical, lest speech freedom founder.

Perhaps because they consider themselves the people most likely targeted, leftists are somewhat less ardent that free speech impunity be carried so far. To be fair, publishing circumstances have changed, and many folks are struggling to keep up with new implications.

Prior to the internet, and passage of Section 230, private editing prior to publication was the gold standard of all publishing. That served greatly to attenuate risks created by any would-be speakers—who likely intended such threats to be purely rhetorical anyway. Because of the editors, rhetorical-looking threats which found publication were far fewer, and audiences for each of them tended to be smaller.

There had always been an undeniable risk that some ill-considered attempt to express yourself as a speaker in deadly earnest would encourage among a numerous audience someone to attempt the suggested killing. But because of editing, pre-internet, the published threats were fewer, and the audiences far smaller.

The internet changed the numbers and the probabilities. The editors are gone. Far more threats get made; audiences to receive the threats encompass far more lunatics, simply because each audience tends to be larger. Evidence that this matters abounds. From Comet Ping Pong, to the Charlottesville car attack, to the attack on the congressional ball game, to the Justice Kavanaugh threat, to the attack on the FBI office in Cincinnati, careless publication of threatening rhetoric has morphed into actual deadly action.

Problem is, that has not gone unnoticed, and some of those who have noticed think it suggests a political opportunity. Some anonymous threateners want to be free to call for yet more violence, deployed against more named targets, because the threateners know the real risk that creates can never be discounted to zero. The threateners thus invoke protected speech to accomplish intimidation which ought to be punished criminally. Election workers, for instance, have been targeted, with the obvious purpose of intimidating some of them out of their jobs. In some cases that has succeeded.

The more that works, the more of it the nation will see. That is an intolerable prospect. It is time for a federal law to criminalize all deadly threats on the internet.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Standing idly by while people get threatened with murder on the internet is more than something which just happens. On this blog, and across the right-wing generally, it is held akin to a sacred principle.

Your eyes must be a deep, deep shade of brown.

[AtR]

I can't imagine what motivated the guy ... perhaps the New York Times will eventually figure it out.

[F.D. Wolf]

Over at Instapundit, co-blogger Ed Driscoll had an interesting transposition of headlines.

The first was "British PM Boris Johnson condemns attack on Salman Rushdie." The second was "UK man arrested for 'malicious communication' after posting meme mocking transgender flag."

If Rushdie had published The Satanic Verses today, as opposed to 1988, would he not be guilty of "malicious communication" for "causing anxiety" to Muslims?

Hold tightly to your freedom of speech, Americans, because the Leftists, enemies of all Western values, are coming for it.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Threats against J.K. Rowling for her support of Rushdie, protected speech?

[Currentsitguy]

I suppose you could put them on the Left but I've always seen the Chautauqua Institute as a sort of throwback to the sort of "Educational Retreat" groups from the Gilded Age popular among so called civic minded industrialists of the era. They are almost a living anachronism.

[DaivdBehar]

Democrats are the biggest losers from the failure of the scumbag lawyer profession. Of Democrats by far the biggest losers are the diverses. Says something about their intelligence that they keep voting for the Democrat rent seekers and parasites.

[DaivdBehar]

Enjoy the Biden economy America. Enjoy the threats of tyrants abroad from the Biden weakness. Enjoy your shortages, your crime, your rats, your plagues, your poop in the street, and your poverty, dumbasses.

[DaivdBehar]

Enjoy your woke schools. Enjoy the grooming of kids for butt banging by degenerates with the monkey. Whom should you thank? The lawyer profession, the font of all evil in our country.

[DaivdBehar]

To end this waking nightmare, do not bother beating the ass of a degenerate. Beat the ass of a legislator and of a scumbag judge. To deter. There is no legal recourse to their rent seeking.

[DaivdBehar]

Hey, lawyer dumbass. Make yourself useful. Prosecute and sue the government of Iran for offering a reward and for its liability for this act.