Writer Salman Rushdie was injured by an assailant while attempting to give a lecture in the western New York town of Chautauqua just before 11 a.m. local time on Friday morning.
A reporter for the Associated Press news agency witnessed a man throw himself on the writer in the auditorium of the Chautauqua Institution before the start of the event.
Apparently he attacked Rushdie with a knife.
The writer fell to the ground, the attacker was overpowered.
Since the publication of the novel "The Satanic Verses" in 1988, the writer, who was born in Bombay in 1947, has been threatened with death by radical Muslims because they consider the portrayal of the prophet Mohammed in Rushdie's novel to be blasphemous.
In 1989, the Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a learned ruling based on Islamic law, a so-called fatwa, which pronounced Rushdie's death and called on Muslims around the world to carry out the sentence.
A bounty of the equivalent of $3 million has been put up.
Even after Khomeini's death, the Iranian leadership did not withdraw the death threat.
Rushdie has been under personal protection ever since.
In 2000 he immigrated to the United States from Great Britain.
In Chautauqua, Rushdie was due to confer with Henry Reese, founder of the largest call center company in the United States.
In 2004, Reese founded the City of Asylum in Pittsburgh, a charity that maintains shelters for persecuted writers from around the world in the industrial Pennsylvania city.
Several hundred spectators witnessed the attack.
The hall was cleared.
Nothing more is known about Rushdie's injuries.