‘You Are Next’: Author JK Rowling Gets Death Threat Over Tweet On Salman Rushdie
Author JK Rowling has received a death threat for a tweet condemning the attack on Salman Rushdie. Rowling, 57, took to Twitter to share screenshots of the threat message from a user.
JK Rowling had reacted to the stabbing incident involving Rushdie with a tweet saying she felt very sick and hoped the novelist would be ok. In response, a user wrote: “Don’t worry. You are next.”
.@TwitterSupport any chance of some support? pic.twitter.com/AoeCzmTKaU
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 13, 2022
The Twitter handle, which issued the death threat, had also praised Hadi Matar, the assailant from New Jersey who stabbed Rusdhie several times during a literary event in western New York on Friday.
Salman Rushdie is on a ventilator with a damaged liver and may lose an eye after he was stabbed by Hadi Matar, who apparently sympathised with Shia extremism and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
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Matar has since been charged with attempted murder in the second degree and assault in the second degree, and police are probing the motive behind the attack.
Rushdie’s book ‘The Satanic Verses’ has been banned in Iran since 1988, as many Muslims consider it to be blasphemous.
Rushdie on life support
Rushdie, whose writing led to death threats from Iran in the 1980s, is on life support after Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old from New Jersey, stabbed the author in the neck at a literary event in western New York on Friday, August 12.
The author was put on a ventilator after hours of surgery and the nerves in his arms were severed. Rushdie’s liver was stabbed and damaged, his book agent, Andrew Wylie, told the media.
The attacker, Hadi Matar, is facing charges of attempted murder and assault. A preliminary review of Matar’s social media accounts by law enforcement showed him to be sympathetic to Shia extremism and the causes of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
New York state Police are working with the FBI and local authorities to determine the motive.
As the world condemned the attack on Rushdie, several hardline Iranian newspapers poured praise on Hadi Matar, Reuters reported.
