Salman Rushdie attack latest: Author remains in surgery as stabbing suspect named - BBC News
Police name the man accused of stabbing Rushdie in the neck as Hadi Matar, 24, from New Jersey.
Though we do not know the motivation of Salman Rushdie's attacker, the author has faced death threats for more than 30 years since the publication of The Satanic Verses.

Rushdie said the main thrust of his novel was to examine the immigrant experience, but some Muslims were offended by portrayals of the Prophet Muhammed and the questioning of the nature of the revelation of the Quran as the word of God.

The Satanic Verses was banned first in the author's country of birth, India, and then several other countries before Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued his infamous fatwa.

The fatwa called for the killing of anyone involved in the publication of the book and offered rewards to those who took part in the murders. That fatwa has never formally been rescinded.

Surprised by the widespread nature of the protests, Salman Rushdie apologised to Muslims but went into hiding for much of the next 10 years.

Though the writer had escaped physical harm until now, others associated with the book had not, with its Norwegian publisher having been shot and seriously wounded in the early 1990s, and its Japanese translator stabbed to death.