蜜芽传媒

Iran has "categorically" denied any link with Salman Rushdie's attacker, instead blaming the writer himself. Mr Rushdie was left severely injured after being stabbed on stage at an event in New York state. He is now able to breathe unaided.

The novelist was forced into hiding for nearly 10 years after The Satanic Verses was published in 1988. Many Muslims reacted with fury to it and the then-Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for Mr Rushdie's assassination.

Aatish Taseer is an author, journalist and friend of Mr Rushdie. He told Newsday: 鈥淲riters have always lived in fear鈥�writers have always been threatened and the ability to give offence goes at the heart of what the literary enterprise is, not because one wants to give offence for the sake of offence but because actually you鈥檙e finding out there鈥檚 really sensitive points in the heart of a society. It鈥檚 the job of writing to tease that out and that鈥檚 why it hurts.鈥�

(Picture: Salman Rushdie and Aatish Taseer at the India Today Conclave 2012 in New Delhi. Credit: Kaushik Roy/The India Today Group via Getty Images.)

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