Khizr Khan Has My Heart

Khizr Khan Has My Heart July 30, 2016

Khizr Khan at DNCThe DNC was a star-studded event. Broadway stars. movie stars, music stars, political stars, retired generals, Mother Emmanuel Church survivors, all came to the podium and all delivered heartening speeches. Some were even moving.

But on the last night, a couple of unknown gold-star parents came out to speak.  I had no expectations. A couple in late middle-age, they were neither beautiful nor stunningly well dressed. Mrs. Khan wore a Muslim head scarf, and stood supportively beside her husband, who put his arm around her briefly as he spoke. They both wore glasses, and their faces held an aura of sadness that was arresting, even before he spoke.

They were introduced as parents of a fallen soldier, Humayun Khan, who died in Baghdad in 2004, and saved his entire unit. The father, Khizr Khan, a lawyer in West Virginia, briefly told the story of the immigration to the US with their three little sons, wanting to live in the democracy the US is. To be a lawyer here, and to become a citizen here, both required studying the Constitution. Khan carries a pocket sized copy with him always. He venerates its words.

About his son, Khan told us that Humayun dreamed of becoming a military lawyer, but felt he must interrupt his education to serve in the Iraq war. With courage and caring, he told his men to stay back as he walked toward an abandoned vehicle in an area they were sent to clear. It blew up and killed Khan, but not his men.

The father, and Ghazala, the mother, have had twelve years to wonder and weep about this, and to ask of God and of this country what Humayun’s death means.

For a year now, they have had to listen to Donald Trump disparage immigrants and Moslems, and suggest bans on more Moslem immigration, a freeze on passports  and travel by Moslem citizens, and perhaps even detention and special surveillance of Moslems living in this country.

The combination of outrage and anguish poured out of this father, as he told the nation about his beloved son.

And then he spoke to Trump personally, saying, You have sacrificed nothing and no one. And then came his most famous line: Have you ever even read the Constitution?

It must be normal among those who study to become citizens, to wonder if the rest of us know anything about our country and its history. But those of us who are not Muslims have not been singled out for disparaging public comment about our faith and our culture.

White Christians, at least the ones I know, think it is silly of President Obama to refuse to say Moslem terrorists. American Moslems must be so grateful to him for that kindness, I think they will shift as a block from the GOP (where more than 90% of their votes were in 2004) to the Dems.

But having to listen to a Presidential nominee ruminate about spying on Moslem citizens, when you are one, when you have been working and paying taxes for decades, and when you have lost a son who was defending America, must be infuriating.

Khizr Khan has given us a vibrant, intelligent, noble, and patriotic model, a beautiful icon, of the American Moslem: devout in love for this country, rooted in love for God, each day mourning their beloved son, and angry as hell at white American bigots who act as if America were for them alone.

I hope we will hear more from Khizr Khan. His is a prophetic and powerful voice, for God, for this nation, and for this election.
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Image of Khizr and Ghazalala Khan, at the DNC last week, taken from Everipedia, a free online encyclopedia.


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