TEHRAN — The New Jersey man, who stabbed Salman Rushdie in western New York on August 12, has denied any connection to the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), saying he acted entirely on his own.

In an exclusive interview with The New York Post on Wednesday, Hadi Matar, however, hailed Imam Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Revolution.

He acknowledged that he doubted the author would survive the attack.

"I guess I was startled when I heard he survived," Matar said in a video interview from the Chautauqua County Jail.

The 24-year-old refused to say whether he was influenced by the late Imam Khomeini's fatwa, which called for murder of Rushdie in 1989 because of his blasphemous book titled "The Satanic Verses".

“I respect the Ayatollah. I think he’s a great person. That’s as far as I will say about that,” Matar remarked, noting that he only "read like two pages" of Rushdie's divisive novel.

“I read a couple of pages. I didn’t read the whole thing cover to cover,” he said.

He said he was inspired to go to Chautauqua after seeing a tweet about Rushdie's visit sometime in the winter.

“I don’t like the person. I don’t think he’s a very good person,” he said about Rushdie. “I don’t like him. I don’t like him very much.

“He’s someone who attacked Islam, he attacked their beliefs, the belief systems.”

The Indian-born British-American novelist, known for his blasphemous views about Islam, has touched nerves during his career. 

Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses," one of the most divisive works in recent literary history, instantly sparked violent and irate protests all around the world. The book was released in September 1988.

The book has been prohibited in Iran, India, Bangladesh, Sudan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Thailand, Tanzania, Indonesia, Singapore, Venezuela, and Pakistan.

Rushdie referred to the Prophet Muhammad in his book as "Mahound," a disparaging epithet given to the Prophet by early crusaders that meant "devil" or "false prophet."

In 1990, he issued a statement claiming he had renewed his Muslim faith, repudiated the attacks on Islam made by characters in his novel, and was committed to working for better understanding of the religion around the world in the "hope that it would reduce the threat of Muslims acting on the fatwa to kill him." Rushdie later admitted that he was "pretending."