Europe 1 with AFP 11:19 a.m., August 13, 2022
Iran's conservative press praised Salman Rushdie's assailant, calling the perpetrator an "apostate".
On Friday, while giving a lecture in New York State, the 75-year-old writer was stabbed.
Since the publication of "Satanic Verses" in 1988, he has been the target of a fatwa from Iran.
Iran's main ultra-conservative daily, Kayhan, congratulated on Saturday the man who stabbed the world-famous British writer Salman Rushdie, author of "Satanic Verses", the target for more than 30 years of a fatwa in the United States. 'Iran.
"Congratulations to this courageous and duty-conscious man who attacked the apostate and the vicious Salman Rushdie", writes the newspaper, whose boss is appointed by the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
"Let us kiss the hand of him who tore the neck of the enemy of God with a knife", continues the text.
No reaction from Iranian power
Salman Rushdie was attacked in the neck and abdomen while standing on the stage of an amphitheater at a cultural center in Chautauqua, in upstate New York.
According to his agent, he was placed on life support and could lose an eye.
The Iranian authorities have so far not officially commented on the assassination attempt on the 75-year-old intellectual.
Following the official line, all of the Iranian media have called Salman Rushdie an "apostate", with the exception of Etemad, a reformist newspaper.
The daily Iran, state newspaper, estimated that "the devil's neck" had been "struck by a razor".
"I will not shed tears for a writer who denounces with infinite hatred and contempt Muslims and Islam," wrote in a tweet Mohammad Marandi, adviser to the team of negotiators on the nuclear file.
"Rushdie is an empire pawn posing as a postcolonial novelist," he added.
"Isn't it strange that as we approach a potential nuclear deal, the United States claims that
Salman Rushdie had set part of the Muslim world ablaze with the publication in September 1988 of the "Satanic Verses", leading the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini to issue a "fatwa" in 1989 calling for his assassination.