Iran’s main ultra-conservative daily, Kayhan, on Saturday congratulated the man who stabbed world-renowned British novelist Salman Rushdie, author of Satanic Verses, who has been the target of a fatwa in the United States for more than 30 years.
“Congratulations to this brave and dutiful man who attacked the renegade and vicious Salman Rushdie,” writes the newspaper, whose chief is appointed by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“Let us kiss the hand of him who tore the neck of the enemy of God with a knife,” the text continues.
Mr Rushdie was attacked in the neck and abdomen while standing on the stage of an amphitheater at a cultural center in Chautauqua, New York. According to his agent, he was on life support and could lose an eye.
The Iranian authorities have not yet officially commented on the assassination attempt on the 75-year-old intellectual.
Following the official line, all Iranian media outlets have branded Mr Rushdie a “renegade” with the exception of the reformist Etemad.
The state-run daily Iran estimated that “the devil’s neck” was “cut with a razor.”
“I will shed no tears for a writer who denounces Muslims and Islam with unending hatred and contempt,” Mohammad Marandi, an adviser to the nuclear file negotiating team, wrote in a tweet.
“Rushdie is an empire pawn posing as a post-colonial novelist,” he added.
“Isn’t it strange that as we move closer to a potential nuclear deal, the United States claims that an attack on Bolton (former White House National Security Advisor) was planned… and then lets it happen,” he marvels.
Salman Rushdie had ignited part of the Muslim world with the publication of The Satanic Verses in September 1988, prompting the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, to issue a “fatwa” in 1989 calling for his assassination .