Hadi Matar Found Guilty: A Grim Chapter in Rushdie’s Story

In a harrowing turn of events last week, Hadi Matar, the man who brazenly attacked famed author Salman Rushdie during a 2022 literary festival, has been found guilty of attempted murder and assault. Yup, Matar’s twisted mission to silence Rushdie has landed him a potential 30-year prison sentence after a jury deliberated for a mere two hours, as reported by NBC News, BBC, and CNN.

Let’s rewind a bit. It was an ordinary day in August 2022 at the Chautauqua Institution in New York when everything took a horrifying turn. As Rushdie settled in to share his thoughts, Matar, then 24, stormed the stage and unleashed a flurry of knife strikes that left the author in a “lake of blood,” with severe injuries including permanent blindness in his right eye and impaired use of his right hand. Can you imagine? Rushdie described feeling like he was slowly dying, thinking, “That was my predominant thought,” per the Associated Press.

During his testimony, Rushdie engaged the courtroom by recalling the sheer panic of the incident. “I was aware of this person rushing at me from my right-hand side,” he noted, framing the scene vividly for those present. The intensity of Matar’s attack, which included stabbing Rushdie multiple times in areas such as the neck, chest, and abdomen, was chillingly efficient. It all went down in front of nearly 1,000 stunned audience members—a surreal public spectacle of violence that has rocked the literary world to its core.

It’s important to contextualize this attack within Rushdie’s long history of facing death threats. Following the publication of his controversial novel, *The Satanic Verses*, in 1989, the author was living under the dark shadow of a fatwa issued by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Although the Iranian government rescinded the fatwa in 1998, Rushdie’s fight for free speech has come at a high personal cost—one he continues to navigate, now sharing reflections on the attack in his forthcoming book, *Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder*.

The case against Matar serves as a stark reminder of the violent lengths to which some will go to silence free expression. As he awaits sentencing, the implications of this trial resonate far beyond the courtroom, highlighting the ongoing global battle for creative freedom.

Sources: Celebrity Storm Wire and People Magazine, NBC News, BBC, CNN, France24, Associated Press