The first time I ever used the words “alhumdulilah”, which translates to praise be to God in Arabic, was the night of 16 November 2018. A Friday night news alert came through on my phone: “CIA concludes Saudi crown prince ordered Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination.” I collapsed into my couch, repeating the words.

I am not Muslim. But Jamal, in life and death, has taught me a lot about faith and looking for hope in all the wrong places. As a writer with a history of criticizing America’s meddling in weaker countries, in normal circumstances, I should have been loath to celebrate the CIA.

But given that, a month before, a group of Saudi hitmen not only kidnapped my friend and writer from a consulate in Istanbul but allegedly cut his body into pieces, I might have been forgiven for looking for any hope that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, would face consequences – cutting off leaders who think nothing of cutting up human beings should be a basic tenet of any healthy country’s foreign policy. (Prince Mohammed has denied any involvement or responsibility for Khashoggi’s killing.)

This week, seven years almost to the day since the CIA announced the crown prince’s responsibility in the murder, Mohammed bin Salman returns to Washington, invited for an offical visit by America’s Temu pharaoh, Donald Trump. The reconciliation between Trump and MBS was perhaps inevitable, given that even before the first Trump presidency,........

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