Author J.K. Rowling has received a death threat following her sympathetic tweet for author Salman Rushdie.
“Feeling very sick right now,” Rowling tweeted in a reply to a link to the “horrifying news” that Rushdie had been stabbed several times while giving a lecture in New York. “Let him be ok.”
“Don’t worry you are next,” one user by the name of Meer Asif Aziz replied to Rowling’s tweet.
BILL MAHER URGES DEBATE ON ‘DANGEROUS’ ISLAM AFTER SALMAN RUSHDIE STABBING
Feeling very sick right now. Let him be ok.
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 12, 2022
“Twitter Support any change of some support?” Rowling tweeted, tagging the platform’s support team along with screenshots of the interaction.
Aziz’s account, with its 24 followers, has not published a tweet since the author pointed out his death threat to the platform’s administration. The account, which normally tweets about 11 tweets per month, was relatively more active around the news of the attack on Rushdie, calling the now-known attacker “a revolutionary Shia fighter” who “followed the fatwa of the late Ayatollah Rohullah Khomenei.” Aziz was referring to the 1989 religious ruling from Iran’s supreme leader that promised to award $3 million to whoever killed Rushdie following the publication of his book The Satanic Verses. The bounty would increase to as much as $6 million over the years, according to the Index on Censorship.
Twitter has not responded to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment to confirm or deny whether the account has been suspended. The original tweet is no longer visible on the platform.
.@TwitterSupport any chance of some support? pic.twitter.com/AoeCzmTKaU
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 13, 2022
Rowling went on to thank her followers for their “supportive messages” while alluding to more death threats made against her.
“Police are involved (were already involved on other threats),” the fantasy author tweeted.
Aziz refers to himself as a “student, social activist, political activist, and research activist” in his Twitter bio. He seemed to celebrate Rushdie’s attacker’s Lebanese background, tweeting about his background according to “Hezbollah fighter reports.” Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist militant group.
The fatwa was issued against the Indian-born and Muslim-raised Rushdie following his 1988 publication of The Satanic Verses on allegations that the book was blasphemous against the Islamic religion. Iranian state media also praised Rushdie’s attacker for completing the fatwa, with one editorial reading: “Let us kiss the hands of the one who tore the neck of the enemy of God with a knife.”
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Rushdie, should he survive his injuries, is currently on a ventilator, unable to speak, suffering nerve and liver damage, and is likely to lose an eye.
