Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or a religious decree, calling for Rushdie and his collaborators to be killed in 1989. Rushdie’s 1988 novel “ The Satanic Verses” was met with demonstrations and bans in several countries, with some Muslims criticizing his depictions of Islam as sacrilegious. In the message that played at Monday’s event, he wore glasses that concealed one of his eyes, which he lost sight in following the attack.Īuthor Salman Rushdie addressed censorship in the West in a rare public speech since he was attacked last August.

He underwent emergency surgery last August after he was stabbed several times before his scheduled lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. The Booker Prize-winning author is intimately familiar with threats to free expression.

Meanwhile, libraries around the country are being targeted for closure. A recent report from PEN America, for which Rushdie previously served as president, found that book bans in public schools continued to rise in fall 2022 and that nearly one-third were the direct result of new state laws. Rushdie, 75, was referencing efforts by conservative politicians to ban books that deal with themes of race and gender identity. He continued, “Now, I mean, sitting here in the United States, I have to look at the extraordinary attack on libraries and books for children in schools – the attack on the idea of libraries themselves.” But in the countries of the West, until recently, there was a fair measure of freedom in the area of publishing.” Quite a lot of the world: Russia, China, in some ways, India as well.

“Obviously, there are parts of the world where censorship has been prevalent for a long time. “We live in a moment, I think, at which freedom of expression, freedom to publish, has not in my lifetime been under such threat in the countries of the West,” he said in a video message at The British Book Awards on Monday. Author Salman Rushdie warned that freedom of expression is at risk in a rare public speech since he survived a stabbing attack last year.

Salman rushdie the satanic