RUSHDIE HORROR: LET’S FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO WRITE!

This isn’t a fantasy … now Rowling in death tweet fears over her sympathy for Rushdie

JK Rowling has received a death threat following her reaction to the horrific attack on Salman Rushdie  in New York.

Rowling, aged 57, sent screenshots to Twitter of a message from a user who said “don’t worry you are next”.

It followed Rowling tweeting she felt “very sick” after hearing the news and hoped Rushdie would “be OK”.

Latest statements said the police are investigating her fears.

The horrific stabbing of Rushdie is being seen as a brazen attack on the freedom of writers to investigate things that others hold in their hearts and souls. Just like lifestyle, religion, politics, doctrine and beliefs.

Booker-prize winning author, Ian McEwan, said it “represents an assault on freedom of thought and speech”. Stephen King said the attack was “horrifying”.

Sadly, it has emerged that writer and campaigner Henry Reese, who had been due to interview Mr Rushdie at the event, suffered a head injury. Henry is the co-founder of a non-profit organisation that provides sanctuary to writers exiled under threat of persecution.

Rushdie was about to give a speech about how the US has served as a haven for such writers.

The novelist was forced into hiding for nearly 10 years after The Satanic Verses was published in 1988. Many Muslims reacted with fury to it, arguing that the portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad was a grave insult to their faith.

The Satanic Verses investigates a short text reputed to have been included in the Qur’an at the suggestion of Satan rather than by divine inspiration when Muhammad was issuing authentic verses.

But as writers, it is our job to investigate boundaries and draw conclusions on the walls of our man-made borders.

We need to be able to write about the tracts of human fears.

Salman Rushdie was stabbed in the liver, the back, the neck and the face on stage in front of hundreds of people in New York city.

He is now recovering and is talking to visitors.

Salman Rushdie over thirty years metamorphosed from being a rather irritating pundit with a poet turn of phrase into a world renowned writer – an academic in bottle-bottom glasses and a scraggly beard – then a cause celeb and a prisoner inside his own world and ours.

Then he became the victim of a murderous attack.

Today he is a survivor. And a hero to all of us who want to write the truth.

The suspected attacker was identified by police as Hadi Matar, 24, from New Jersey. He was charged on Saturday with attempted murder and assault. Matar and his family hails from the south Lebanon town of Yaroun, said its Mayor Ali Tehfe.

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