Renowned/persecuted author, Salman Rushdie, warns anti-Israel college students that calling for a “Free Palestine” is the same as calling for a “Taliban-ruled Palestine”

Salman Rushdie, the British-American author who narrowly survived an attempt on his life in New York in 2022 by an Islamic terrorist, said Sunday that if a Palestinian state were established today, it would be “a Taliban-like state” governed by Hamas.

Times of Israel The Indian-born novelist criticized anti-Israel student protests, saying in an interview with German tabloid Bild that it was “strange” that progressive youth would support a “fascist terrorist group” like Hamas, a satellite state of Iran. Is this what the progressive movements of the Western Left want to create?” he asks.

Rushdie, an award-winning novelist, was blinded by a fellow Musim in one eye after being repeatedly stabbed on stage in August 2022 while speaking at an arts center in New York. Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old Shi’ite Muslim American from New Jersey, was arrested at the scene and is standing trial for attempted murder.

Rushdie has been the victim of repeated death threats and attempts on his life since the publication of his 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses,” which was declared blasphemous by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini, who led the Islamic revolution in Iran ten years earlier. Khomeini had issued a fatwa – a religious edict – calling for Rushdie’s death over that book, which contained passages seen as critical of Islam.