FILE PHOTO: Author Salman Rushdie arrives for the PEN New England's Song Lyrics of Literary Excellence Award ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. September 19, 2016. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo

According to several witnesses, writer Salman Rushdie was attacked on a stage in upstate New York. The police and emergency services were called to the event venue in Chautauqua in western New York State, the police confirmed to the German Press Agency on Friday. There is no detailed information about Rushdie’s health. However, he is said to have been able to leave the scene with the help of paramedics. He was taken to a hospital. The attacker is said to have had a knife. The man was taken away by the police.

Because of his novel “The Satanic Verses” (1988), the now 75-year-old Rushdie had been given a fatwa that called for his death. Muslims felt their religious sensibilities were offended by the work. Iran’s revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued an Islamic legal opinion calling for the killing of Rushdie and everyone involved in distributing the book. A Japanese translator was later actually killed. Rushdie had to go into hiding and was given police protection. Rushdie was born in Mumbai in 1947, the year of Indian independence. He studied history at King’s College, Cambridge. He had his breakthrough as an author with the book “Midnight’s Children” (“Midnight’s Children”), which won the Booker Prize in 1981.