Authorities Investigating Death Threats Against ‘Harry Potter’ Author J.K. Rowling

“Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling’s life was threatened on social media, after she tweeted her support for author Salman Rushdie after he was attacked and stabbed on Friday.

Rowling shared the “horrifying news” that Rushdie, who has a $3 million bounty on his head by a semi-official Iranian foundation for his depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in his more than 30-year-old novel “The Satanic Verses,” was stabbed in New York prior to giving a lecture.  

“Feeling very sick right now,” Rowling posted on Friday. “Let him be ok.” In response to her post, one Twitter user replied, “Don’t worry you are next.”

The “Harry Potter” scribe shared the exchange with Twitter mods, asking them if there was “any chance of some support,” but the liberal social platform determined that there “were no violations of the Twitter rules in the content” she reported in a screenshot of the correspondence. 

Rowling retorted by quoting Twitter’s policy back to them in her next tweet. “These are your guidelines, right?” She wrote. “Violence: You may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people. We also prohibit the glorification of violence… Terrorism/violent extremism: You may not threaten or promote terrorism…”

.@TwitterSupport any chance of some support? pic.twitter.com/AoeCzmTKaU

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 13, 2022

She also let her concerned followers know that she was grateful for their supportive messages and that the “police are involved,” and “were already involved on other threats” against her life. 

Rowling has largely been persona non-grata on on Twitter and to former loyal fans of the “Potterverse,” after her June 2020 tweets about feminism were considered transphobic by LGBTQ+ activists.  

When one furious activist sent a death threat to Rowling, which wished that someone would put a pipe bomb in her mailbox, the author shot back, “To be fair, when you can’t get a woman sacked, arrested or dropped by her publisher, and cancelling her only made her book sales go up, there’s really only one place to go.”

Marie Finn