Author Salman Rushdie is in hospital after being attacked at a talk on artistic freedom in Chautauqua, New York.
Rushdie was born into a Muslim Kashmiri family in Bombay, now Mumbai, before moving to the UK. He later became a US citizen, living in New York City.
A self-described lapsed Muslim and "hardline atheist," he has been a fierce critic of religion across the spectrum and outspoken about oppression in his native India, including under the Hindu-nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
His second novel, Midnight's Children, won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1981.
But he has long faced death threats for his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, first published in 1988.
The Satanic Verses backlash
Described by The Conversation as one of the most controversial books in recent literary history, The Satanic Verses, set off angry demonstrations all over the world upon publication, some of them violent.
It was banned in many countries with large Muslim populations, with some Muslims saying the novel contained blasphemous passages.
In 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran's supreme leader, pronounced a fatwa, or religious edict, calling upon Muslims to kill the novelist and anyone involved in the book's publication.
Then living in the UK, Rushdie, who called his novel "pretty mild", was forced to go into protective hiding for the greater part of a decade.
At the Melbourne Writers Festival in 2014, he said it would have been "cowardly, craven, disgusting and shameful" to withdraw The Satanic Verses.
"The history of literature is one in which writers have defended their work, and I wasn't going to be the one who didn't," he said.
"[But when] somebody's trying to kill you because of something you've said or written … you have to ask yourself if it's worth dying for."
Why was it so controversial?
Writing for the Conversation in 2017, theological scholar Myriam Renaud said dream sequences in the novel sometimes seemed to mock some of the "most sensitive tenets" of Muslim religious beliefs:
Muslims believe that the Prophet Mohammed was visited by the angel Gibreel – Gabriel in English – who, over a 22-year period, recited God's words to him. In turn, Mohammed repeated the words to his followers. These words were eventually written down and became the verses and chapters of the Quran.
Rushdie's novel takes up these core beliefs. One of the main characters, Gibreel Farishta, has a series of dreams in which he becomes his namesake, the angel Gibreel. In these dreams, Gibreel encounters another central character in ways that echo Islam's traditional account of the angel's encounters with Mohammed.
Rushdie chooses a provocative name for Mohammed. The novel's version of the Prophet is called Mahound – an alternative name for Mohammed sometimes used during the Middle Ages by Christians who considered him a devil.
In addition, Rushdie's Mahound puts his own words into the angel Gibreel's mouth and delivers edicts to his followers that conveniently bolster his self-serving purposes. Even though, in the book, Mahound's fictional scribe, Salman the Persian, rejects the authenticity of his master's recitations, he records them as if they were God's.
In Rushdie's book, Salman, for example, attributes certain actual passages in the Quran that place men "in charge of women" and give men the right to strike wives from whom they "fear arrogance," to Mahound's sexist views.
Through Mahound, Rushdie appears to cast doubt on the divine nature of the Quran.
Dr Renaud said many Muslims felt Rushdie's work implied that the Prophet Mohammed was the source of revealed truths, rather than God.
Literature expert Greg Rubinson argued in Rushdie's defence, suggesting the novelist's "irreverent mockery" was questioning whether it was possible to separate fact and fiction. Dr Rubinson pointed out that Gibreel was not able to tell what is real and what is a dream in the novel.
Rushdie himself argued religious texts should be able to be challenged.
But, as Dr Renaud notes, that view clashes with those who believe the Quran is the literal word of God.
What happened next?
In 1991, Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses, was murdered.
Then, in 1998, following the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian government said it would no longer back the fatwa. And Rushdie began to live relatively openly.
But Iranian organisations, some affiliated with the government, have since raised a bounty worth millions of dollars for Rushdie's murder.
Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency and other news outlets donated money in 2016 to increase the bounty by $US600,000 ($841,000). The news agency called Rushdie an apostate who "insulted the prophet" in its report on Friday's attack.
Ayatollah Khomeini's successor as supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said as recently as 2019 that the fatwa was "irrevocable."
Rushdie published a memoir in 2012 about his cloistered, secretive life under the fatwa called Joseph Anton, the pseudonym he used while in British police protection.
His new novel, Victory City, is due to be published in February.
Attack in Chautauqua
Rushdie was at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York when he was attacked, apparently being stabbed in the neck.
Attendees helped wrest the attacker from the author, who had fallen to the floor.
A New York State Police trooper providing security at the event took the attacker into custody. The man was later identified as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old man from Fairview, New Jersey, who bought a pass to the event.
Rushdie was there for a discussion about the US giving asylum to artists in exile and "as a home for freedom of creative expression", according to the institution's website.
PEN America, an advocacy group for freedom of expression of which Rushdie is a former president, said it was "reeling from shock and horror" at what it called an unprecedented attack on a writer in the US.
"Salman Rushdie has been targeted for his words for decades but has never flinched nor faltered," Suzanne Nossel, PEN's chief executive, said in the statement.
Earlier in the morning, Rushdie had emailed her to help with relocating Ukrainian writers seeking refuge, she said.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was appalled that Rushdie was "stabbed while exercising a right we should never cease to defend."
ABC/wires
