'Lajja' author Taslima worried after attack on Salman Rushdie

Writer Taslima Nasreen has said she was worried after hearing about the attack on Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, who is battling death threats for years after the publication of his novel 'The Satanic Verses' published in 1988.

Rushdie, had been reportedly stabbed on stage at Chautauqua Institution in western New York, before he was to deliver a lecture on artistic freedom on Friday. The attacker was detained. Authorities have not come out with the motive for the attack yet.

A fatwa had been issued by Iran's former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 and Rushdie had been living under police protection.

Bangladeshi writer Nasreen, who had also received threats and suffered assaults from Islamic groups for her novel Lajja, shared her thoughts soon after the news of the attack on Rushdie came out.

"I just learned that Salman Rushdie was attacked in New York. I am really shocked. I never thought it would happen. He has been living in the West, and he has been protected since 1989. If he is attacked, anyone who is critical of Islam can be attacked. I am worried," Nasreen tweeted.

"Ppl r saying let's see what ws the motive bhind the attack on Rushdie b4 making comment. Is it very hard to speculate tht an Islamist tried to kill him as he ws a target of Islamists?What wd they say if it comes out tht the attacker was an Islamist?' Oh no,he's not a true Muslim'? (sic)" read her second tweet.

Taslima Nasreen, who fled Bangladesh to live in India, had to leave her home in Kolkata in November, 2007, after riots broke out.

Nasreen, now 60, fled Bangladesh for the first time in 1994 when a court said she had "deliberately and maliciously" hurt Muslims' religious feelings with her Bengali-language novel "Lajja", or "Shame", which is about riots between Muslims and Hindus, according to a Reuters report.

Thousands protested against her in Bangladesh then, demanding she be killed for blasphemy.