Author Salman Rushdie was stabbed on stage, according to a video sent to Twitter.

Salman Rushdie, a writer, was stabbed in front of a large audience while onstage at a New York gathering.

Shocked witnesses described the incident as a “truly horrible event” when the author of The Satanic Verses was apparently brutally stabbed before the massive gathering was evacuated.

Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on Mr Rushdie in 1988 after the publication of his divisive book and ordered the author’s execution. The attacker was quickly stabbed. Others who followed Rushdie on social media noted that he appeared to have been stabbed and bleeding.

Salman Rushdie stabbed on stage video

Salman Rushdie has apparently been criticized for his performance on Friday at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York. The noted novelist was assaulted during the performance and received immediate medical attention, according to the Associated Press.

Images taken at the scene and posted to Twitter by another user appear to show Rushdie being put into an ambulance and a man in police custody.

Rushdie fell to the ground or had to be transported to a hospital, according to the AP. The Chautauqua institution did not respond when Insider contacted them. It was also unable to immediately contact local officials for comment.

Rabbi Charles Savenor, the executive director of the Civic Spirit, witnessed the incident. He was speaking when Rushdie was attacked while sitting in a chair after being welcomed onto the stage to applause. A video posted by another Twitter user shows Rushdie being placed on a Medevac helicopter.

Rushdie received death threats in response to his controversial earlier book “The Satanic Verses.” Iran’s president Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for Rushdie’s assassination in a fatwa he issued in 1989.

Salman Rushdie Threatened His Life For Years

Indian-born novelist Salman Rushdie is particularly interested in the interactions, changes and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations. His works combine magical realism and historical fiction. His works mostly take place in India, hence he was constantly threatened with death.

His second book, Midnight’s Children, was published in 1981 and was awarded the Booker Prize. It was named “the best novel of all winners” on the 25th and 40th anniversary of the award.

When The Satanic Verses was released in 1988, Muslims were outraged. He received death threats, including one from a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini calling for his assassination in 1989.

In 1983 Rushdie was selected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 1999 he was awarded the title of Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts und Lettres by the French government. [3] In recognition of his contributions to literature, he was knighted in 2007. On The Times’ 2008 list of the 50 best British novelists since 1945, he came in at number 12.

Learn more about Salman Rushdie’s family

Ahmed Salman Rushdie was born to a Muslim Indian Kashmiri family in Bombay on June 19, 1947 during the British Raj. He is the son of lawyer and businessman Anis Ahmed Rushdie, a Cambridge graduate and educator Negin Bhatt.

Rushdie has been married four times. He was married to Clarissa Luard[13] from 1976 to 1987. They had a son together named Zafar (born 1979). [14] He dumped her for Australian author Robyn Davidson, who had been introduced to him by their mutual friend Bruce Chatwin in the mid-1980s.

His second wife was Marianne Wiggins, an American author; they married in 1988 and divorced in 1993. Elizabeth West, his third wife, whom he was married to from 1997 to 2004, gave birth to Milan. In 2004, he was married to Indian-American actress, model and Top Chef presenter Padma Lakshmi. On July 2, 2007, the union broke up.

Anis Ahmed Rushdie was kicked out of the Indian government services after it was discovered that the birth certificate he handed over had been manipulated to make him look younger than he actually was (ICS). Rushdie has three sisters. He said in his 2012 book that his father took the name Rushdie in tribute to Averroes.