Rushdie Stabbing Brings Terror to an Idyllic Retreat for Earnest Inquiry

This past week, life at the Chautauqua Institute lasted like 148 summers.

Adults spent their days attending church, playing badminton, taking pottery classes and listening to music by the lakes of picturesque western New York. The children attended camp and roamed freely even after the sun had set.

Why would thousands of families on a 750-acre gated property suspect an attacker is among them?

Then on Friday morning, as author Salman Rushdie was preparing to give a talk about the United States as a safe haven for exiled writers, a man with a knife stormed the stage.

The assailant stabbed Mr. Rushdie repeatedly and left the stage of one of America’s most famous spiritual and cultural retreats, an amphitheater, covered in blood.

Rushdie, who remained hospitalized on Saturday after being put on a ventilator the night before, had injuries to his eyes, arms and liver, and prosecutors said he had 10 stab wounds. New York State Police identified the suspect in the attack as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old man from New Jersey who was arrested after being knocked to the ground by onlookers. He was charged with attempted second-degree murder and was arraigned Saturday afternoon.

Authorities have not revealed a motive, but in 1989, Iran’s supreme leader issued a religious edict known as a fatwa, calling on Muslims to ban Rushdie after the publication of Rushdie’s novel Satanic Verse. ordered to be killed. Social media accounts associated with Mr. Matar suggest that he supports Islamic extremism.

A spasm of violence brought the specter of Islamic terrorism to the American institutions at the heart of Protestantism, which spawned a grassroots movement of serious intellectual inquiry and self-improvement in the 1800s. The attack on Mr. Rushdie shattered the sense of calm that prevailed in Chautauqua, which many families felt was a rare refuge from the problems of the modern world.

“Chautauqua feels like an escapist utopia,” said Gillian Weeks, 37, a scriptwriter from Santa Monica, California. “This is a place where children can be more free and independent than anywhere else in the normal world.”

Founded in 1874 by Louis Miller and John Hale Vincent as a “vacation learning” educational experiment, Chautauqua began as a Methodist retreat but soon grew into a community of other Protestant denominations.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the institution prospered, spawning a movement of other Chautauqua centers to emerge in states such as Colorado, Ohio, and Michigan. Over the years, the agency has featured notable authors and thinkers, from Mark Twain to former judge Sandra Day O’Connor.

Today, Chautauqua Institution, about an hour south of Buffalo, has changed little since its heyday a century ago. The manicured grounds include his lawn bowling court, his art gallery, and a string quartet playing on the lawn outside the majestic hotel.

Hundreds of residents stay on site throughout the year, with homeowners and guests flocking to the facility for a feast of cultural programs ranging from Sheryl Crow to Ballet Hispanico during the nine-week summer season. Population soars. Rushdie was the featured speaker for Friday’s 10:45 am lecture.

Mr Rushdie lived in a fortified London hideout for a decade after being ransomized, but has made many public appearances over the years.

Shortly after Mr. Rushdie took the stage on Friday, the assailants ran down the aisle of the amphitheater and pushed a startled guest aside. The attackers faced no apparent resistance when they took the stage and began stabbing Mr. Rushdie, who was sitting and waiting for his story to begin.

As the attack unfolded, spectators rushed to the stage to separate the assailant from Mr. Rushdie. A New York State Police officer eventually arrived on the scene and handcuffed the attacker.

While Mr. Rushdie was bleeding on stage, doctors in the audience put pressure on his wounds and called for a doctor. He was eventually taken by helicopter to a hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Security at Chautauqua Agency is minimal. All visitors to the community are required to enter the premises during the summer with a pass that costs at least $200 for two days, but there is little police presence on campus. Most events have an unarmed, yellow-shirted “community safety officer,” but some high-profile events have uniformed officers on site. There is also

But even the main amphitheater, which regularly hosts popular musicals and celebrity talks, has no bag checks or metal detectors.

More than a dozen witnesses said they were surprised at how easily the attackers reached Mr. Rushdie.

85-year-old John Brett said, “There was a major security lapse. It was terrifying that someone could get so close without any intervention.”

Another witness, Anita Ayerbe, 57, said the police were slow to respond. “The amphitheater is a soft target,” she said. “There were no obvious security guards at the venue, so he ran unhindered. It wasn’t the cops who first appeared on stage.”

Chuck Koch, an attorney in Van Wert, Ohio, who owns a house in Chautauqua, was sitting in the second row when the attack began and rushed onto the stage to help.

“I remember when ‘Satanic Verses’ came out and the fatwa was put on him,” he said. Nevertheless, “the only security I saw was the sheriff outside the gate. There was no visible security at all under the stage.”

In recent years, some former Chautauqua employees have asked management to impose tighter security, including bag checks, metal detectors and tighter screening in the amphitheater, according to two people familiar with the matter. He asked for it to be implemented. They said executives had turned down the proposal for fear of disturbing the tranquil atmosphere of the community.

Michael Hill, president of the Chautauqua Institution, disputed the suggestion that management resisted demands for increased security.

“There was no resistance or refusal to listen to expert advice on how to secure Chautauqua,” he said in an interview Saturday.

Hill said the institution seeks to provide security while maintaining an idyllic peace that encourages relaxed reflection and thought.

“The only way to guarantee that nothing happens in Chautauqua is to lock everything down and have a full police state, which essentially makes what we do in Chautauqua irrelevant I would,” said Hill. “I’m not convinced that lining up a small army on the spot would change what happened.”

The Chautauqua Institution’s head of security retired last year and the position remains vacant. But Hill said his staff had consulted with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, state police and county sheriffs this year to discuss potential threats, and that there was additional security in Rushdie’s story on Friday.

“Security issues were very important to us even yesterday,” Hill said. “Naturally, after what happened yesterday, we will continue to examine it in the light of the ineffable.”

Mr. Matar walked around the grounds for several days. The Shatowka Institute before attacking Mr. Rushdie, according to several people who witnessed Mr. Rushdie on Tuesday. Several guests, including Ayerbe, said they saw him in the amphitheater.

The attack shattered Chautauqua’s sense of tranquility, leaving longtime guests to wonder what would become of the retreat, which seemed like a rare haven from modern life.

“We started bringing our kids here and now we’re bringing our grandchildren,” said 72-year-old Dennis Ford, a longtime local resident. “We had this feeling that this place was disconnected from the real world.

Given the Chautauqua Institute’s long history as an intellectual crucible, it was all the more troubling to visitors that the attack could have been motivated by an attack on freedom of expression.

“It’s the superior angel of our nature and represents the best that Western culture has to offer,” Weeks said. It’s ironic that Shatowka is the site of this incident.”

In the hours after the attack, charming scenes of small towns were juxtaposed with reminders of violence. In the community’s main plaza, a craft fair sells garden art as backpacks are searched by police officers with bomb-sniffing dogs. The waterfront was closed as police searched the forest, and the program was canceled after rumors of further threats spread among the family.

On Friday night, Chautauqua residents held an all-night vigil in a philosophical temple modeled after a Roman forum, not far from the amphitheater where Mr. Rushdie was stabbed. Hundreds of people attended and many cried. The pastor encouraged those in attendance to shout out their thoughts.

“Everyone is important in God’s eyes,” cried a voice.

“God bless Chautauqua,” cried another.

“Hatred Can’t Win”

On Saturday morning, Hill said he was more committed than ever to fulfilling the agency’s mission of creating an inclusive forum for free expression.

“We will do soul-searching at Chautauqua,” he said. “We will return to the pulpit and the podium to continue this work.”