Republicans, local Muslim delegate respond to Khizr Khan's DNC speech
Today John McCain joined Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders in denouncing Donald Trump’s comments about the speech Khizr Khan made on the stage of the Democratic National Convention last week. Khan’s Muslim son Humayun died serving the Army during the Iraq War. Trump responded...
Today John McCain joined Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders in denouncing Donald Trump’s comments about the speech Khizr Khan made on the stage of the Democratic National Convention last week. Khan’s Muslim son Humayun died serving the Army during the Iraq War.
Trump responded to the speech by attacking the parents, asking why Khizr’s wife Ghazala Khan wasn’t speaking. Trump suggested that Islamic practice prevented Ghazala from speaking. Some Muslim American women started a hashtag #CanYouHearUsNow to speak out against Trump’s comments.
Ghazala responded to Trump’s comment about her silence at the DNC in an op-ed published by the Washington Post.
Credit: Gage Skidmore
“I cannot walk into a room with pictures of Humayun. For all these years, I haven’t been able to clean the closet where his things are — I had to ask my daughter-in-law to do it. Walking onto the convention stage, with a huge picture of my son behind me, I could hardly control myself. What mother could? Donald Trump has children whom he loves. Does he really need to wonder why I did not speak … Donald Trump said he has made a lot of sacrifices. He doesn’t know what the word sacrifice means.”Khizr and his wife Ghazala have been making many television appearances criticizing Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the US. Today, they announced that they would like to step away from the public feud with Trump. “Enough is enough. Every decent Republican … has rebuked this behavior, yet no one has stood up and said, enough, stop it. You will not be our candidate,” Khizr told CNN. Noman Khanani was at the DNC last week as a Muslim delegate from Massachusetts. He said he is glad the speech is getting so much attention, but has mixed feelings about it. “I thought it was a tremendous speech, a great speech. But again there’s also this other idea that’s looming at large that it somehow takes a Muslim to be a martyr in the army of the United States to get people to cheer and support us. Like really, it really takes that much from someone to get you to support us?” said Khanani. Despite this tension, Khanani said Khizr Khan’s speech helped raise awareness about Islamophobia overall. At the Convention, some Muslim delegates said the Democratic Party hasn’t done enough to support them. Some protested Michael Bloomberg’s DNC speech, because of the surveillance programs of Muslim communities Bloomberg put in place during his time as mayor of New York City. Some Muslim delegates were also disappointed with Bill Clinton’s speech, in which he mentioned Muslims in one sentence. Clinton said, “If you’re a Muslim and you love America and freedom and you hate terror, stay here and help us win and make a future together.” “On the surface that seems like a good quote, he’s including Muslims. But it’s also constantly associating Muslims with terror,” said Khanani. “It really reduces the issue of terrorism to religion, as if Muslims at large can somehow stop this issue when it’s much greater than religion.” With additional reporting by Emily Wooldridge.