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.”

Would Muslim Brotherhood rule really result in a “free society tolerant of all viewpoints”? During the Egyptian presidential campaign of 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood Freedom and Justice Party candidate Mohamed Morsi (who was elected) declared:

The Qur’an is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal … Today we can establish Sharia law because our nation will acquire well-being only with Islam and Sharia. The Muslim Brothers and the Freedom and Justice Party will be the conductors of these goals.

“Jihad is our path.” As I show in great detail in my book The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS, throughout 1,400 years of Islamic history, Muslims pursuing jihad as their path have been the cause of unfathomable levels of misery and suffering for non-Muslims whose sole crime was to believe in the wrong religion. Hardly a sound basis for a “free society tolerant of all viewpoints.”

Sharia law, once established, allows for the beating of disobedient women (Qur’an 4:34), the devaluation of women’s testimony (Qur’an 2:282), the devaluation of women’s inheritance rights (Qur’an 4:3), the taking of sex slaves (Qur’an 4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, 33:50, and 70:30), the death penalty for leaving Islam (Qur’an 4:89), and much more that hardly provides for a “free society tolerant of all viewpoints.”

In 2014, Khashoggi wrote happily that Hamas leaders Khaled Meshaal and Ismail Haniyeh “have revived the Palestinian issue.” He complained about “Israel’s occupation” and about “an Israeli war against the Palestinians that has not stopped for a single day since 1948.”

Why would the Washington Post hire a pro-jihad, pro-Sharia, pro-Hamas advocate for political Islam?

The answer is clear: the Post hired Jamal Khashoggi because his views coincided with those of the paper’s editorial board. The American Left today holds positions on Israel, Hamas, and political Islam that are essentially indistinguishable from those of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Now that Khashoggi has been killed, one option for the Post as it looks to fill the vacancy among its columnists would be to appeal to the Egyptian government to free Mohamed Morsi and allow him to emigrate to the United States. He can take Khashoggi’s place in sagely advising American foreign policy experts that their best course is to support the Muslim Brotherhood and other warriors for jihad.