Iran, whose leadership had issued a religious edict calling for Salman Rushdie’s murder more than three decades ago, has not officially commented on the attack against the author. But supporters of the government took to social media to praise the stabbing of Rushdie as the ayatollah’s fatwa finally materialising in action.

Some said they wished for him to die.

A quote from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the current Iranian leader, was widely shared on social media in which he said the fatwa against Rushdie was “fired like a bullet that won’t rest until it hits its target”.

“This deserves congratulation: God willing, we will celebrate Salman Rushdie going to hell soon,” Keyvan Saedy, a conservative Iranian pundit, said on Twitter. Hossein Saremi, a conservative social media activist, wrote on Twitter that the attacker was part of “Islam’s soldiers without borders.”

“Revenge may be delayed, but it will inevitably happen,” Saremi wrote. Several accounts affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards on the application Telegram also openly boasted about the attack.

New York Times News Service