(NEW YORK)–Ayad Akhtar, President of PEN America, issued the following statement in response to the attack on author Salman Rushdie:
“It is hard to find words to express the emotions occasioned by today’s shocking attack on Salman Rushdie. As a former President of our organization, Salman means so much to us. His leadership in the wake of 9/11 set the course for the two decades which have followed. He has been and remains a tireless advocate for imperiled writers, for unfettered intellectual and creative exchange, and one of the last half-century’s great champions of freedom of expression. But it is in his own truly seminal, challenging body of work that Salman has stood most powerfully for the values of PEN America — work that has questioned founding myths and expanded the world’s imaginative possibilities, at great cost to himself. On a more personal note, as a writer whose own work is fundamentally shaped by an early encounter with The Satanic Verses, it is particularly horrifying to me that the nightmare set in motion by the fatwa in 1989 is still with us. We are thinking of Salman today across the PEN America community, and praying for his recovery.”
