Reacting to the attack on author Salman Rushdie, British prime ministerial candidate Rishi Sunak said this served as a wake-up call to the West over Iran. According to the Sunday Telegraph he said, "The brutal stabbing of Salman Rushdie should be a wake-up call for the West, and Iran's reaction to the attack strengthens the case for proscribing the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps],” Rishi Sunak, the former finance minister, said, according to the paper.
Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, in poor health in the last year of his life after the grinding, stalemate 1980s Iran-Iraq war decimated the country's economy, issued the fatwa on Rushdie in 1989. The Islamic edict came amid a violent uproar in the Muslim world over the novel, which some viewed as blasphemously making suggestions about the Prophet Muhammad's life.
The 24-year-old man detained in connection with the stabbing of Mumbai-born controversial author Salman Rushdie was sympathetic to "Shia extremism" and the causes of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to a media report.
The New York State Police identified the suspect as Hadi Matar from Fairview, New Jersey while the motive behind the act is still unknown. The suspect ran up onto the stage prior to a speaking event at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua and attacked 75-year-old Rushdie. According to the law enforcement authorities, the author was stabbed "at least once in the neck and at least once in the abdomen.
