The shameful attack on Salman Rushdie

We are all praying that Salman Rushdie will be okay. What happened in Chautauqua in New York today is indescribably appalling. An author, a man, stabbed in the neck just as he was about to speak on freedom of expression. This attack is a vile affront to liberty and to the principles of an open society.

Much remains unknown. We don’t know what condition Rushdie is in: he was last seen being carried on a stretcher to an air ambulance. And we don’t know anything about the attacker or the motivation. But there are things we do know. We know that for more than 30 years Rushdie has lived in the shadow of a despicable fatwa issued by Iran. We know that Rushdie became Public Enemy No. 1 for many radical Islamists following the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses. And we know that, far too often, intellectuals here in the West failed to make a full-throated defence of Rushdie’s freedom of expression.