What follows are excerpts from that interview. This interview shows that Khashoggi wasn’t some kind of secret jihadist, but a journalist simply doing his job who evolved from an Islamist in his twenties to a more liberal position by the time he was in his forties.

It’s also clear from the interview, which Khashoggi gave 13 years before he was was killed in what the Saudi foreign minister agrees was a murder (and six years before US Navy SEALS killed bin Laden), that he had once been close to bin Laden, but had become increasingly alienated from him, particularly beginning two decades ago when bin Laden first declared his war against the United States.

By 2005, Khashoggi said he had also rejected the Islamist idea of creating an Islamic state and had turned against the religious establishment in Saudi Arabia. He also had embraced the Enlightenment and American idea of the separation of church and state.