Last Thursday, as the nation sat entertained by the antics of politicians and celebrities at the Democratic National Convention, an unlikely ― and graceful ― pair took the stage; the bereaved parents of the late Army Captain Humayun Khan. His father, Khizr Khan, was accompanied by his mother, Ghazala, who stood solemnly at her husband’s side with a stone blue scarf draped over her head.
Khan gave a sobering account of his 27-year old son who died in a car bombing in Iraq. He was a University of Virginia alum and the first of the University’s ROTC program to die in combat. Capt. Khan ordered his soldiers to hit the dirt as a vehicle carrying explosives entered his compound. He had taken a couple steps forward to inspect before the the explosives detonated. This happened in 2004.
Khizr Khan’s speech was, well, a tear jerker. He was courageous and spoke with an authenticity and integrity that is infrequent to come by. He challenged Donald Trump.
“Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery?” Khan asked. “Go look at the graves of the brave patriots who died defending the United States of America. You will see all faiths, genders, and ethnicities.” And then Khan made a powerful call out, “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”
His rebuke had mass. Khizr Khan got into a ring with a boxer who notoriously plays unfairly, taking him by the throat. His speech in its entirety was a trump card ― or so we thought. Surely, no one, not even Donald Trump himself, would have the presence of mind to discount a Muslim American’s sacrifice of this magnitude.
Wrong. Donald Trump’s response was nauseating. Trump responded to Khizr Khan’s speech with brass comments in an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News. In typical Trump fashion, he shrewdly suggested Capt. Khan’s mother, Ghazala, had been hushed into silence on the DNC stage ― that she was oppressed.
“If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me.” Odd, Trump just described his own wife. Who usually doesn’t say anything unless there’s a teleprompter involved and a plagiarized speech from the First Lady in office.
Ghazala Khan didn’t bear it, her rebuttal came in form of a powerful, honest op-ed in the Washington Post this morning.
“Here is my answer to Donald Trump: Because without saying a thing, all the world, all America, felt my pain. I am a Gold Star mother. Whoever saw me felt me in their heart.”
When Stephanopoulos probed further, asking Trump to list the sacrifices he has made for this country. Trump responded: “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. I’ve had tremendous success. I think I’ve done a lot.”
The fact is, Ghazala Khan carries the burden of her son’s death, something many ― fortunately ― can not compute. Judging by her body language she was distraught by the memory of her son, unable to gaze up at his picture. What Trump describes as his “sacrifices” is a mockery of true sacrifices, the kinds of life and death. And Ghazala let him know it too, saying, “Donald Trump said he has made a lot of sacrifices. He doesn’t know what the word sacrifice means.”
Maybe Trump’s criticism would be more digestible if he had prefaced it with a condolence or tempered his words with some degree of sensitivity and compassion. He could have attacked the Democratic Party, or threw another punch at Hillary as he evidently enjoys doing. But instead he made a hit below the belt.
Fox News didn’t air Khizr Khan’s speech from the Democratic National Convention. They panned away from the most human, sincere and important message we’ve heard across the national conventions the past two weeks. Their unrelenting ploys to undermine and stereotype minorities, notably Muslims, and rendering us silent and invisible yet again is actually maddening.
I’d like to take a minute to mention that although the Republican Party has been overtly Islamophobic, Muslims are being treated as puppets and props across both parties.
Khizr Khan gave repeated invocations of patriotism and his fierce commitment to this country. The father of a fallen soldier should not have to explain his family’s or his son’s sacrificial legacy.
Muslim Americans have become siloed into being walking manifestos circumventing terrorism and gatekeepers of peace if they’re not pledging their allegiance to ISIS. And though the vast majority identify as the former, it’s important to recognize that Muslims are not a homogeneous population. We are so fixated on people’s fragile sensibilities that we become okay with having our identities oversimplified.
Parties are rendering our opinions and efforts on every matter futile. Pigeon-holing and fear-mongering thrives when it’s given oxygen, and in this case, that oxygen comes from being reactionary.
Use your voices. Use your resources. Do not be victimized. Catalyze change wherever you can in all size and scope. It’s possible to contribute to the progress of a nation beyond fighting its wars. Ghazala Khan did something huge by showing us who she is, sharing the grief that she shoulders, and reminding Trump and us all to check ourselves.
Who is Donald Trump? A farce. A con. An inarticulate clown. But the character to scrutinize isn’t necessarily Trump’s ― it’s our own.