USA

The mom of the New Jersey man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie says her son was a basement-dwelling loner who barely worked, never had a girlfriend — and “changed” after visiting the Mideast.

Silvana Fardos, the mother of suspect Hadi Matar, 24, added to the Daily Mail on Sunday that she is disowning her son over his alleged crime and hopes Rushdie gets well.

“’I feel sorry for Mr Rushdie,” Fardos said.

The man suspected of the attack on Salman Rushdie, Hadi Matar, grew up in the United States and was born nine years after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued his notorious fatwa. Little else is known of him, though some people acquainted with him earlier in his life have told reporters that (as is often the way in such cases) that they were surprised by his action, for he seemed a normal and friendly person.

If Matar’s profile is confirmed, it will demonstrate once again the effect that a violent, aggressive, and totalitarian ideology may exert on people, though the question remains as to whether ideologies choose men, or men choose ideologies. No doubt a dialectical relationship exists between personality and ideology.

Salman Rushdie was on Saturday taken off a ventilator and is able to talk, a day after he was stabbed as he prepared to give a lecture in New York.

Rushdie remains in hospital with serious injuries, but fellow author Aatish Taseer tweeted on Saturday evening that he was “off the ventilator and talking (and joking).” Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie, confirmed that information without offering further details.

Jerusalem, Israel – An Islamic studies academic dubbed the “Professor of Peace” at Oberlin College in Ohio endorsed the campaign to assassinate U.S. and British writer Salman Rushdie because the famous novelist depicted the Muslim prophet Muhammad irreverently.

A 24-year-old man named Hadi Matar allegedly stabbed Rushdie on Friday in the neck and liver during the author’s speech in Chautauqua, New York. Rushdie is on a ventilator and cannot talk.

As more details emerge about the criminal history of Muhammad Syed, 51, charged in the murders of two Muslim men in Albuquerque, and a prime suspect in the killing of two more, the family of one of the victims has blamed police for not intervening sooner.

Sharief Ahmadi Hadi, the brother of murder victim Mohammad “Zahir” Ahmadi, says that prime suspect Syed regularly harassed his family and slashed the tires of his wife’s car in the years before his brother’s murder. Hadi says he believes Syed targeted his family because they are Shiite Muslims.

The man accused of stabbing author Salman Rushdie held a fake driver’s license bearing the surname of an infamous Hezbollah commander, it has been claimed.

That driver’s license, which was was found on 24-year-old Hadi Mater bore the name Hassan Mughniyah. Both the first and second names are linked to infamous terrorist organization Hezbollah. The group’s current leader is named Hassan Nasrallah. While one of the group’s most notorious figures was Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in a CIA-linked assassination in Syria in 2008.

NBC New York reports that Mater’s social media accounts showed that he was sympathetic to Shia causes, including supporting the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Today the man with a loaded AK47 who got arrested in front of my home in New York, has been indicted on a weapons count.
The authority moved me to a safe house.
But to be honest the word “safe” is too luxury for those of us who speak up against Islamists. @NBCNews pic.twitter.com/Wx5QsosweR

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) August 12, 2022