Iran Awards Foundation Novelist Striker Salman Rushdie Tanah Covering An Area Of 1,000 Persegi Meters

Salman Rushdie. (Wikimedia Commons/Alexander Baxevanis)

JAKARTA - A foundation in Iran praised the man who attacked novelist Salman Rushdie last year, who left him seriously injured, saying he would reward the man with 1,000 squares of land in the form of agricultural land, state television said.

Rushdie, 75, lost one eye and one hand after being attacked by a 24-year-old American Shi'ah man from New Jersey, while on stage at a literary event held near Lake Erie, western New York in August.

"We sincerely thank the brave actions of American youth who have blindened one of Rushdie's eyes and paralyzed one of his hands," said Mohammad Esmail Zarei, secretary of the Foundation to Implementation Imam Khomeini's Fatwas.

"Rushdie is now nothing more than a living corpse and in honor of this bold act, about 1,000 square meters of agricultural land will be donated to the person or his legal representative," Zarei added.

The attack came 33 years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran's supreme leader, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, calling for Rushdie to kill, months after Rushdie's publication of "The Satanic Verses".

Some groups of Muslims consider a number of parts of the novel about the Prophet Muhammad as the end.

Rushdie, who was born in India to the Muslim levy family, has lived on security guarantees, spending nine years in hiding under British police protection.

Meanwhile, Iran's pro-reformed government, Mohammad Khatami, distanced himself from the fatwa in the late 1990s, prizes of millions of dollars hanging over Rushdie's head continued to grow and the fatwa was never lifted.

Khomeini's successor, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was suspended from Twitter in 2019 for saying that the fatwa against Rushdie "cannot be canceled."

It is known that the man accused of assaulting the novelist has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and second-degree assault.