The man suspected of the attack on Salman Rushdie, Hadi Matar, grew up in the United States and was born nine years after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued his notorious fatwa. Little else is known of him, though some people acquainted with him earlier in his life have told reporters that (as is often the way in such cases) that they were surprised by his action, for he seemed a normal and friendly person.
If Matar’s profile is confirmed, it will demonstrate once again the effect that a violent, aggressive, and totalitarian ideology may exert on people, though the question remains as to whether ideologies choose men, or men choose ideologies. No doubt a dialectical relationship exists between personality and ideology.
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