A year later, would-be Rushdie assassin rots away in jail

When I Google the name Hadi Matar the first article posted from a major mainstream media outlet dates back to Aug. 17, 2022. The headline of this New York Times article reads, "'I'm Done With Him': A Mother's Anger Over Rushdie Attack."

Five days earlier her son Hadi stabbed, nearly to death, famed author Salman Rushdie on a stage at the Chautauqua Institution, an increasingly woke Christian retreat in western New York.

Rushdie has lived much of his life in hiding following a 1989 fatwa by "Iran's supreme leader." Rushdie's book "The Satanic Verses" had, the Times reminded us, "provoked outrage among some Muslims."

Get the hottest, most important news stories on the internet – delivered FREE to your inbox as soon as they break! Take just 30 seconds and sign up for WND's Email News Alerts!

The point of the mom article was to establish Matar as a lone knife man, a "troubled recluse," someone who does not represent Islam, the religion of peace. True to form, the FBI "disclosed no clear motive for the attack."

Other major media quickly lost interest as well. Within a week of the attack, they stopped reporting on Matar's fate. They could find no useful plot line. Given that Matar used a knife, they could not even exploit the gun angle.

So a year later Matar rots away in the Chautauqua County jail in Mayville, a town as small and quaint as Mayberry – unseen, unsung, all but unknown by name even to people who follow the news.

My summer digs are nearby. A week after the incident I found myself in a checkout line at the grocery store across the street from the jail.

Checking out in front of me was a public defender whose office was representing Matar. He stood out. He wore a suit. Having seen no media presence around the jail, I asked if I could interview his client.

He thought for a second but ruled against it. Matar had given one interview to the New York Post in which he expressed disappointment at not having killed Rushdie. Defense attorneys are never happy to hear such things.

Fortunately for the attorneys, the major media have left them alone. Virtually all the reporting on the case in the last year has been done by the small town papers in Chautauqua County. Here at least people remember the incident.

I was reminded of this last week when the library board in nearby Fredonia, New York, met to discuss my disinvitation from speaking about my new book, "Untenable: The True Story of White Flight from America's Cities."

As I reported earlier in WND, the library director, "after careful consideration and consultation with our stakeholders," regretted to inform me that "we must disinvite you from the scheduled library appearance on September 9th."

Among the reasons why I was disinvited, said the board president, was the attack on Rushdie. "That was on the back of my mind," he told his fellow stakeholders. "We are not here to handle conflict … or violent situations."

He had earlier informed my wife, however, that the complaints against my speaking – "ranging from general disbelief to adverse protestations" – all "came from women."

These are not Weather Underground or Antifa types, but liberal middle-aged biddies with too much time on their hands. I would have welcomed an attack, even with pool noodles, but it was not to be.

As a further irony, the Times describes Rushdie as "a pre-eminent figure of free expression." That may be so, but the Chautauqua Institution has invited him to speak there because they know he will not openly criticize Islam.

Rushdie has good reasons to temper his criticism. Chautauqua does not. Trashing its Christian roots, the Institution has been hell-bent on promoting Islam for no better reason than to support the left's "intersectional" quest for power.

Chautauqua leadership is no more keen on "free expression" than the Fredonia library board or the Iranian mullahs. Some 20 years before the attack on Rushdie, I spoke at Chautauqua about the media's crude stereotyping of the religious right.

I pointed out the one notable exception to the media anti-conservative bias. "Islamic extremists in America," I argued, "have proven to be exactly the bogeyman that the media have long imagined the Christian right to be – patriarchal, theocratic, sexist, homophobic, anti-choice, and openly anti-Semitic."

The crypto-communist head of Chautauqua's religion department, Joan Brown Campbell, took exception. Campbell began her op-ed in the Chautauquan Daily with the usual progressive boilerplate about the Institution's commitment to a free exchange of ideas.

Then she went after me. "Jack Cashill stepped outside the boundaries of civil discourse," she thundered. "Several of his comments were not only provocative, but potentially harmful."

I was banned from there too. For the next 20 years, leadership was free to pretend that Islam was the religion of peace. So convincing was their pretense that Rushdie had minimal security when he spoke, and Hadi Matar took advantage.

The woke don't correct their mistakes. They bury them.

Jack Cashill's new book is available in all formats – "Untenable: The True Story of White Flight from America's Cities."

Content created by the WND News Center is available for re-publication without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].

SUPPORT TRUTHFUL JOURNALISM. MAKE A DONATION TO THE NONPROFIT WND NEWS CENTER. THANK YOU!