"Initially, I thought he had punched me" — Salman Rushdie testifies in court about 2022 stabbing incident with suspect Hadi Matar present

Renowned novelist Salman Rushdie testified in court during the trial of Hadi Matar, who has been accused of attempting to murder the author in 2022 by stabbing him on stage. The incident took place at the Chautauqua Institution Amphitheater in New York in August 2022 moments before the novelist was preparing to deliver a lecture about the safety of authors in the United States.

On Tuesday, February 11, Salman Rushdie came face to face with Hadi Matar for the first time since the stabbing incident. Matar has pleaded not guilty but is the only suspect accused of stabbing the author. Rushdie testified in court during the hearing saying:

"I was aware of this person rushing at me from my right-hand side. He hit me very hard. Initially, I thought he had punched me. I thought he was hitting me with his fist. But very soon afterwards I saw really quite a very large quantity of blood pouring out onto my clothes, and by that time he was hitting me repeatedly. Stabbing, slashing."

According to Reuters, Salman Rushdie was stabbed 15 times during the incident on his head, neck, left hand, and torso. He lost vision in his right eye and also injured his liver and intestines. Speaking about his injuries, Rushdie said in court:

"You can see that's what's left of it. There's no vision in the eye at all. I was very struck by his eyes which were dark and seemed very ferocious to me. He struck me a number of times, another half a dozen times. At some point, I thought I was dying. That was my immediate thought."

The trial for the accused 26-year-old Hadi Matar began in New York on Monday, February 10, 2025. He has also been charged with assault against Rushdie's co-panelist, Henry Reese, who was injured above his eye during the incident.

Matar's lawyers have not denied that he was present at the amphitheater during Rushdie's stabbing but argued in court that the prosecutor's evidence cannot prove Matar's criminal intent to charge him with attempted murder.

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Hadi Matar claimed Salman Rushdie was "not a good person" following his arrest over the author's stabbing

Frankfurt Book Fair 2023 - Image via Getty

In an interview with The New York Post shortly after his arrest, suspect Hadi Matar opened up about his intentions behind visiting the Chautauqua Institution Amphitheater in New York to attend Salman Rushdie's lecture. He said:

"I don't think he's a very good person. He's someone who attacked Islam."

According to BBC, Hadi Matar was born in the United States to Lebanese parents and hails from Fairview, New Jersey. During his arrest, the police said they did not have any motive for the attack. During his aforementioned interview with the NY Post, Matar reportedly praised Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini for issuing a fatwa against Salman Rushdie.

The fatwa, which is an order from a religious leader, came after Salman Rushdie published his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses. The novel was based on the life of the founder of Islam, Prophet Muhammed, and included elements of surrealism and magic realism, similar to Rushdie's other prominent works.

Book "The Satanic Verses" by Salman Rushdie - Image via Getty

After the publication of his novel, Rushdie remained in hiding for nine years. The UK government put the Bookers-Prize-winning novelist under protection. There have been multiple assassination attempts on Salman Rushdie over the years. Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator who translated The Satanic Verses, was also stabbed to death after the declaration of the fatwa.

In his interview, Hadi Matar claimed he read a few pages of The Satanic Verses and was keen on visiting Rushdie's lecture after seeing a tweet announcing the same. Despite confirming his presence, Matar has pleaded not guilty to his charges. If convicted, he can face up to 32 years in prison.

In 2024, Salman Rushdie published a memoir titled Knife, where he detailed the 2022 attack and how he recovered from the same. The author spent six weeks in hospital after the attack. During his testimony in court, one of Matar's attorneys, Lynn Schaffer, asked Rushdie how he found out he was stabbed exactly 15 times.

"I wasn't counting at the time. As I said, I was otherwise occupied. But afterward, I could see them on my body. I didn't need to be told by anybody," the novelist answered.

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Rushdie is known for multiple best-selling novels, including Midnight's Children (1981), Shame (1983), The Moor's Last Sigh (1995), and Quichotte (2019). In 1981, he won the prestigious Booker Prize for Midnight's Children. His last published novel was Victory City (2023).