Radical Islamist who attacked Rushdie rewarded agricultural land for "making Muslims happy"

"We sincerely thank the brave action of the young American who made Muslims happy by blinding one of Rushdie's eyes and disabling one of his hands," said Mohammad Esmail Zarei.

The 24-year-old youth who attacked writer Salman Rushdie has been rewarded agricultural land by an Iranian foundation, Reuters reported.

The youth named Hadi Matar, a US national of Lebanese origin, had attacked the author before the 75-year-old Booker Prize-winning author was about to speak at a literary event at the Chautauqua Institution in Western New York.

Now, it is reported that he has been rewarded 1,000 square metres of agricultural land. "We sincerely thank the brave action of the young American who made Muslims happy by blinding one of Rushdie's eyes and disabling one of his hands," said Mohammad Esmail Zarei, secretary of the Foundation to Implement Imam Khomeini's Fatwas.

Rushdie's wounds were profound, but he's [also] lost the sight of one eye. He had three serious wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut. And he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso.

Rushdie had spent years in hiding after Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa' in 1989 calling for his death following the publication of his novel 'The Satanic Verses'.

The Islamists were upset with some verses and alleged that it was blasphemous.

However, Iran's government of President Mohammad Khatami distanced itself from the fatwa in the late 1990s, but the multimillion-dollar bounty was never lifted. It has to be noted that Khomeini's successor Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was suspended from Twitter in 2019 for saying the fatwa against Rushdie was "irrevocable."

During the investigation, it was found from Matar's social media account that he was sympathetic to "Shia extremism" and the causes of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), but no direct links between the accused and IRGC was found. The authorities have discovered pictures of Iranian commander Qassem Solemani, who was assassinated in 2020, in a cell phone messaging app belonging to Matar.

Rushdie was born in Mumbai in 1947. He was sent to boarding school in England before studying at the University of Cambridge. In 2007, he was knighted for services to literature.