On Friday, August 12 we heard of the vicious stabbing of Salman Rushdie before he could begin his lecture in the Amphitheater at The Chautauqua Institute in western New York. The assailant, who may have had religious motives, stabbed Rushdie in the abdomen and several times in the neck and eye. His agent gave a grim report on the injuries:

“The news is not good,” Mr. Wylie said in an email. “Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.”

Rushdie is known for his offensive literary portrayal of the prophet Mohammed and was the target of a fatwa, an assigned religious hit job, three decades ago. For ten  years he lived in seclusion, but later resolved to accept the danger of traveling in public. This is the first occasion he suffered the violent consequences of his freedom.

We were in Chautauqua in June this year before the season of lectures and artistic events that carry on through the summer. It is a beautiful community, saturated with Victorian cottages of modest to impressive dimensions, with a cluster of lecture halls and summer residences at the center. It has a century and a half tradition of inviting wise and challenging speakers on a range of subjects from historical to scientific to political to spiritual.

This summer we followed several of our favorite speakers at Chautauqua virtually, as we have occasionally with videotaped lectures through the year. Two days before the Rushdie assassination we heard the remarkable Dave Isay share excerpts from his work with StoryCorps, an interviewing and archiving service to give voice to anyone who has a story to tell. He told us about the new initiative “One Small Step,” which pairs people of opposing political views to question each other about their apolitical lives.  They had great success getting the participants to see each other as human beings, even pursuing relationships after the interviews. The recorded excerpts he shared were humorous, profound and touching. Nothing gave us more hope than to hear people discover the humanity in each other through controlled dialogue.

More than once Isay referred to Chautauqua as a lovely community of wisdom and hope. He said words to the effect that it was hard to imagine the political strife beyond the bounds of Chautauqua. It was a blessed place.

Then Friday shocked the beloved community to its core. It was as if the Garden of Eden had been taken by force.

From today’s New York Times:

Iran has not yet officially commented on the attack against the author.

But supporters of the government took to social media to praise the stabbing against Mr. Rushdie as the ayatollah’s fatwa finally materializing. Some wished for him to die. Some warned that similar fate awaits other enemies of the Islamic Republic.

Friday evening the beloved community had a vigil praying for the restoration of Salman Rushdie and the peaceful vision he wrote about. It is hard to imagine this community ever existing again without heightened security. Nothing will change its values of free thought and unity, but its gates and policies will be secured against future attack.  A tragic loss of innocence.

Our prayers go out to this community and the courageous man who almost lost his life there.