British-American author Rushdie: A Palestinian state would be 'Taliban-like' if established now

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In an interview published on Sunday, renowned author Salman Rushdie said if a Palestinian state were established today, it would be “Taliban-like.”

Though supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state at some point in the future, Rushdie indicated that a two-state solution would be a disaster under the current circumstances.

“If there were a Palestinian state now, it would be run by Hamas and we would have a Taliban-like state,” he said. “A satellite state of Iran.”

“Is this what the progressive movements of the Western Left want to create?” the 76-year-old author asked rhetorically, referring to the widespread left-wing support for the near-term establishment of a Palestinian state.

While criticizing left-wing celebration of the Hamas attack, Rushdie also said that “any normal person can only be shocked by what is happening in Gaza right now,” and that protesting Israel’s actions in the war is “okay.”

Rushdie noted, however, that many of the anti-Zionist protests taking place across America go far beyond decrying civilian casualties in Gaza.

“When it slides into antisemitism and sometimes even support for Hamas,” he argued, “then it becomes problematic.”

The British-American author also pointed out the “strange” inconsistency of self-professed leftists supporting Hamas, which he called a “fascist terrorist group.”

A vocal critic of Islamist extremism, Rushdie is most famous for his book The Satanic Verses, a novel that includes a fictional portrayal of Muhammad, the central figure of Islam, believed by Muslim's to be the last prophet sent by God to mankind.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who became the Iranian regime's first Supreme Leader after leading the 1979 Islamic Revolution, issued a fatwa against Rushdie and the publishers of The Satanic Verses, in which he called for their deaths.

“I call on all valiant Muslims wherever they may be in the world to kill them without delay, so that no one will dare insult the sacred beliefs of Muslims henceforth,” Khomeini wrote in his 1989 fatwa.

In 2022, Rushdie survived an attack from an Islamist extremist who stabbed him 15 times on stage before speaking at a conference in New York.

While most famous for his criticism of Islamist extremism, Rushdie is an atheist who opposes religion, calling it “a mediaeval form of unreason.”