In 1994, Naguib Mahfouz, 82 years old at the time, was stabbed in the neck outside his home. Mahfouz was the only Arab ever to have been awarded the Novel Prize for literature, but was widely reviled by many revivalist preachers for the alleged blasphemy of his work "Children of Gebelawi", which was banned by Egyptian religious authorities. Several years before Mahfouz was stabbed, Omar Abdul-Rahman, "the blind sheikh" (served time in a U.S. penitentiary for his involvement in the first World Trade Center bombing), "noted that had someone punished Mahfouz for his famous novel, Salman Rushdie would not have dared to publish Satanic Verses". Preacher Abd al-Hamid Kishk accusing Mahfouz of "violating Muslim sacred belief" and "supplanting monotheism with communism and scientific materialism". Although he survived, Mahfouz produced fewer and fewer works because of the damage to his right arm.