Read Some Pages Of Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses", Says Attacker

"He's someone who attacked Islam, he attacked their beliefs, the belief systems," Hadi Matar told the Post, adding that he had watched YouTube videos of Salman Rushdie.

The man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie said he respected Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini but would not say if he was inspired by a fatwa issued by the former Iranian leader, according to a New York Post interview published on Wednesday.

Hadi Matar also told the Post he had only "read a couple pages" of Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses" and that a tweet in the winter announcing the author's visit to the Chautauqua Institution gave him the idea of going there.

Rushdie, 75, was set to deliver a lecture on artistic freedom at the western New York venue when police say 24-year-old Matar rushed the stage and stabbed the Indian-born writer on Friday last week.

Rushdie has lived with a bounty on his head since "The Satanic Verses" published in 1988 prompted Khomeini to issue a fatwa urging Muslims to kill him.