Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, against whom Khomeini declared a "fatwa of death", was stabbed at a ceremony of the Chautauqua Institution.

in New York on Friday, August 12. Salman Rushdie's spokesperson, Andrew Wiley, has also been reported to be injured in the incident. Rushdie's attack was carried out by the 24-year-old Hadi Matar, of New Jersey, who is currently in custody.

The attack on Salman Rushdie is certainly one of numerous terrorist attacks that are a daily occurrence in different parts of the world. Acts of terror that have spread globally as means of killing opponents, enforcing suppression, etc., and are carried out indiscriminately, taking the lives of civilians, including children. These acts have turned societies into a living hell, as no place is any longer safe. Certainly, it is the ethnic, religious and racial hatred that form the basis of turning innocent, impoverished and desperate human beings to perpetrators of murder and assassins of reactionary forces. Undoubtedly, the attack on Salman Rushdie is a criminal act, one that is condemned and abhorred by the civilized humanity, irrespective of whether it is carried out by an individual, a movement and/or a state.

Today, however, as large political and military global camps are being formed after the enforcement of three decades of devastating wars, and the role of major states in organising all kinds of armed national, religious, and racial gangs and bandits as proxies in their service, have all made the world into a field of terror of official and unofficial, governmental and non-governmental crimes. The crime against Salman Rushdie is the same as those taking place daily in one or another corner of the world, where someone, some people, children in school, …., are being murdered. Crimes that, in the first instance, are a direct consequence of ethnic, religious and racial hatred that are not only fuelled by official propaganda machines but also organised by different states. It is the creation of such conflicts that have harboured not only different states forces but provided the ground for the rise of all sorts of criminal and terrorist gangs.

If previously the terror in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Syria, Libya, Palestine, Lebanon, etc. was considered as a part of the “natural life” of those societies, if the fatwa of death and assassination of political opponents by reactionary religious authorities was bound within "Islamic" countries, today this is no longer the case. The current hostilities among major global states in pursuit of securing their political and military interests, and of course at the cost of ruining the lives large populations and societies, is no longer bound to Africa and the Middle East. What we are witnessing presently, is the direct consequence of the acts of the major states and their regional and local allies and proxies that have made the state and non-state terror as a part and parcel of life across the world.

There is no doubt that the only way for the working class and civilized humanity everywhere to end these crimes, terror, wars, destruction and displacement, the only way to eradicate national, religious and racial enmities, is through bringing about an end to the capitalist system and bourgeois states. It is by ending their rule that we could have a world rid of crime, terror, poverty and deprivation.

While condemning this act of terror, we call on all freedom seeking people to join ranks in building resistance against all the forces and powers that use organised terror as a means to solve their conflicts. Salman Rushdie and Salman Rushdies should not be allowed to become victims of the criminals and their dealings.

 

Worker-communist Party of Iraq - Organisation abroad

Worker-communist Party of the Kurdistan - Organisation abroad

Hekmatist party (official line) - Organisation abroad

August 13, 2022