Mayville, N.Y. - J.K. Rowling, the 'Harry Potter' author received death threats for supporting Salman Rushdie who was fatally stabbed as he prepared to give a lecture in upstate New York on Friday.
Rushdie, the author of “The Satanic Verses” remained hospitalized with serious injuries, but fellow author Aatish Taseer tweeted in the evening that he was “off the ventilator and talking (and joking).” Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie, confirmed that information without offering further details.
J.K. Rowling received the death threat from a Twitter user on Saturday who lauded the stabbing of fellow author Salman Rushdie.
Rowling had posted on Friday night about Rushdie’s stabbing, saying the incident was “Horrifying news. Feeling very sick right now. Let him be ok.”
Meer Asif Aziz, who described himself as a Pakistani “student, social activist, political activist and research activist.” responded to her post saying the stabber, Hadi Matar, was a “revolutionary Shia fighter.” He went on to threaten Rowling, saying: “Don’t worry you are next.”
According to an archive of his account, Aziz previously tweeted about his desire to destroy Israel and branded the Jewish state, Ukraine, and India as “terrorist states.”
He also appeared to be a supporter of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Dear leader your struggle for….will not be wasted until we young generation are with you,” Aziz wrote in a reply to a Khamenei tweet.
Rowling added that police were involved in the recent threat, along with others.
Suspect pleads not guilty
Earlier in the day, the man accused of attacking him Friday at the Chautauqua Institution, a nonprofit education and retreat center, pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault charges in what a prosecutor called a “preplanned” crime.
Investigators were working to determine whether the suspect, born a decade after “The Satanic Verses” was published, acted alone.
Rushdie, 75, suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and an eye, Wylie said Friday evening. He was likely to lose the injured eye.
Authors, activists and government officials cited Rushdie’s courage and longtime advocacy of free speech despite the risks to his own safety.
Rushdie, a native of India who has since lived in Britain and the U.S., is known for his surreal and satirical prose style, beginning with his Booker Prize-winning 1981 novel “Midnight’s Children,” in which he sharply criticized India’s then-prime minister, Indira Gandhi.
“The Satanic Verses” drew death threats after it was published in 1988. Rushdie’s book had already been banned and burned in India, Pakistan and elsewhere before Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death in 1989.
-AP/TOI