Rushdie's Attacker Has Now Been Convicted of Terrorism, Which Names What the Attack Was

A federal jury in the Western District of New York has convicted Hadi Matar of attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organisation, of committing an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries, and of providing material support to terrorists. He was already sentenced in a state court in May 2025 to 25 years for the attempted murder of Salman Rushdie, and now faces a maximum federal penalty of life. Sentencing is set for 3 November, and his lawyer has said he will appeal.

Matar, 28, attacked Rushdie on stage in western New York in August 2022, stabbing him repeatedly. Rushdie survived and lost the sight in one eye. Prosecutors said Matar had spent months planning, and investigators found Hezbollah material at his home, which is the basis of the support conviction.

The state trial established what he did. This one establishes what it was for, and that distinction is the reason the federal case was brought at all. An attempted murder conviction treats the attack as violence against a person. A terrorism conviction treats it as an attempt to enforce a decades old religious edict by killing the writer it named, which is what it was.

For anyone who publishes, that naming is the useful part. The fatwa against Rushdie is 37 years old and the attack came 33 years after it was issued, carried out by a man born long after the book was written. The lesson writers, translators and publishers have drawn is that this kind of threat does not expire on a schedule, and a verdict that calls it terrorism is at least an accurate description of the risk they work under.