We do not share values with the Saudi regime

‘We’ve defeated ISIS.” So said President Trump in a recent Associated Press interview. Not for the first time was the president’s exuberance overstated. Military officials quickly added the qualification that the Islamic State’s end appears to be near but it is not yet vanquished.

Welcome news all the same. News that would naturally lead one to ask: Does the dismantling of the jihadist network mean, finally, an end to the brutal enforcement of sharia? Can we close the book on savage beheadings intended to terrorize and to inculcate compliance with a literalist, scripturally based construction of Muslim law, set in …