Iranians have reacted with both praise and concern over the attack on novelist Sir Salman Rushdie. The Satanic Verses author, who was stabbed as he was about to give a lecture in New York state, has been the target of a decades-old 'fatwa' by the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini calling for his death.
It remains unclear why Sir Salman's attacker, identified by police as Hadi Mattar of Fairview, New Jersey, stabbed the author on stage at an event in western New York. Iran's theocratic government and its state-run media have assigned no motive to the assault.
But in Tehran, some willing to speak to The Associated Press offered praise for the attack targeting a writer they believe tarnished the Islamic faith with his 1988 book The Satanic Verses. In the streets of Iran's capital, images of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini still peer down at passers-by.
