Salman Rushdie, stabbed by Islamic extremist, had complained about too much security

Salman Rushdie, who was stabbed multiple times on the stage at a literary festival in the United States on Friday, had once complained about "too much security" around him. The Mumbai-born British writer had been on the Islamists' radar since he wrote the controversial book The Satanic Verses in the 1980s. He was attacked by 24-year-old New Jersey resident Hadi Matar at the event at the Chautauqua Institution in Western New York and is fighting for his life in a hospital.

He complained about too much security in 2001 when he was attending the Prague Writers' Festival. He told the reporters, "To be here and to find a large security operation around me has actually felt a little embarrassing... I thought it was really unnecessary and kind of excessive and was certainly not arranged at my request."

"I spent a great deal of time before I came here saying that I really didn't want that. So I was very surprised to arrive here and discover a really quite substantial operation, because it felt like being in a time warp, that I had gone back in time several years," he had added.

Salman Rushdie was stabbed in the neck and in the belly multiple times. He had suffered grave damage to his liver and might lose an eye due to nerve damage. According to reports, the organizers of the event had dismissed recommendations for security checks like metal detectors as they thought this could create a divide between the speakers and audience.

Hadi Matar appears to be sympathetic to Shia extremism and Iran's political administration. However, he appeared to the authorities to be working alone.

Iran had announced a 3 million US dollars reward for anybody who killed Rushdie for allegedly insulting Islam.  

With inputs from PTI