When Khizr Khan, originally from Pakistan, and his wife Ghazala Khan, walked on to the podium at the Democratic National Convention July 28, the tall and somber man, a lawyer by profession, spoke to a national audience in words full of pain about the loss of his 27 year old son in Iraq 12 years ago. He exhorted Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for what he described as anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and anti-women rhetoric and chastised him for allegedly not having read the constitution of America or seen the headstones at National Arlington Cemetery which reveal the various religions and national origins of soldiers who gave their lives for this country.
“Hillary Clinton was right when she said my son was the ‘best of America’. If it was up to Donald Trump, we would not have been in America,” Khizr Khan asserted at the convention.
According to a June 9, 2004 press release from the Department of Defense, U.S. Army Captain Humayun Sadiq Mohammed Khan, died in Operation Iraqi Freedom, June 8, 2004, in Baquabah, Iraq, “after a vehicle packed with an improvised explosive device drove into the gate of his compound while he was inspecting soldiers on guard duty.” Humayun Khan was awarded the Purple Heart for his bravery and for saving the lives of scores of fellow soldiers.
Capt. Khan told his subordinates to hit the ground while he walked several steps towards the vehicle to stop it, only to have it explode and kill him, his father told the thousands crowded into the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, many in tears.
Humayun Khan had last spoken to his mother that May, on Mothers Day and told her not to worry and that he was safe, according to the Washington Post. Khizr Khan told the Washington Post in 2005, that the family left Pakistan because it was under military rule in the 1970s, and they came to the U.S. to have more freedom and opportunity, settling in Silver Spring, Maryland.
At the Democratic convention Khizr Khan said they were blessed that they could bring their three sons to the U.S. “where they could follow their dreams.”
At the convention July 28, there was no mention of Pakistan. Instead Khizr Khan and his family were introduced as immigrants who moved to the U.S. from the United Arab Emirates.
Khan was assigned to Headquarters, Headquarters Company, 201st Forward Support Battalion, 1st Infantry Division, Vilseck, Germany, where he had a girlfriend.
The Embassy of Pakistan in Washington, D.C. sent out a press release when Capt. Khan died, which said DCM Mohammad Sadiq and interns from the Embassy of Pakistan attended the funeral at the Arlington National Cemetery on June 16, 2004. It also said that at that time, Capt. Khan was the senior-most officer of Pakistani-American heritage in the U.S. Army to have lost his life.
“You (Trump) are asking Americans to trust you with our future. Let me ask you, have you even read the Constitution of America? I will gladly lend you my copy,” Khizr Khan said taking out a slim pamphlet from his pocket and holding it out. The Washington Post reported that earlier this month Trump told Congressional Republicans he would defend “Article XII” which does not exist. In the Constitution, Khan said, “Look for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection under the law’.”
“You have sacrificed nothing and no one,” Khan said about Trump. He asked “every patriot American, all Muslim immigrants, all immigrants to not take this election lightly.”
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