The Washington Post is indignant that “hard-line Republicans and conservative commentators are mounting a whispering campaign against Jamal Khashoggi,” supposedly in order to “protect President Trump from criticism of his handling of the dissident journalist’s alleged murder by operatives of Saudi Arabia.” The Post hits these “hardliners” for highlighting Khashoggi’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and claims that “while Khashoggi was once sympathetic to Islamist movements, he moved toward a more liberal, secular point of view.” In reality, Khashoggi was the real hardliner, supporting jihad violence and Sharia right up to the time of his murder — even in his recent Post columns. This raises questions about why the paper hired him as a columnist in the first place. As recently as August 28, 2018, Khashoggi wrote in the Post:

The United States’s aversion to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is more apparent in the current Trump administration, is the root of a predicament across the entire Arab world. The eradication of the Muslim Brotherhood is nothing less than an abolition of democracy and a guarantee that Arabs will continue living under authoritarian and corrupt regimes.

While positing the Muslim Brotherhood as the standard-bearer of democracy in the Arab world, Khashoggi did not deny that its aspiration is to impose Sharia wherever it can. He wrote: “There can be no political reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that political Islam is a part of it.” And he warned: “It is wrong to dwell on political Islam, conservatism and identity issues when the choice is between having a free society tolerant of all viewpoints and having an oppressive regime.”