Khizr Khan very nearly stole the show from Hillary Clinton at last night’s Democratic national convention. Khizr is the father of Army Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in Iraq by a car bomb in June 2004 while heroically saving his fellow soldiers from almost certain death.
When Khizr spoke about his son’s sacrifice at the convention, the audience was completely rapt with attention. And when he lashed out directly at Donald Trump for his policies, those regarding Muslims especially, the audience burst into long and thunderous applause. With his slow and deliberate delivery and his repeated invocations of Muslim American patriotism, Khan’s speech was as masterly as it was memorable. He grabbed our hearts while grabbing Trump by the throat.
But here’s the thing. While Khan’s speech was meant to tell everyone that Muslim Americans are proud and patriotic citizens, which is fine and true, there are also other ways to work for the good of the nation than fighting in its wars. Muslim Americans have the same rights as other Americans to oppose America’s foreign wars and misguided policies, and we should be able to do so without having our loyalty brought into question.
The fact that our allegiance is questioned by the Republican party is well known. The GOP under Donald Trump has adopted extreme policy positions, from proposing a ban on Muslims entering the country to electronically tagging Muslims on the federal government’s terrorism watch list so law enforcement can track their movements. (The latter suggestion was endorsed this week by Trump’s adviser former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani.)
So to show the wide chasm of difference between them and the Republicans, the Democrats included Muslims in several specific ways during their convention. President Obama spoke about being American while wearing “a baseball cap or a hijab”. Bill Clinton tried (but failed miserably) to include Muslims in his speech and his version of America. We heard from Khizr Khan. And we saw plenty of Muslim women and men throughout the televised coverage of the convention.
But Muslim Americans must be recognized as full and participating citizens by the Democratic party, not merely as symbols of patriotism or photo-ops of inclusion. Earlier in the convention, the Clinton campaign tweeted a photo of Nida Allam, a Muslim woman who wears hijab, as she was wiping away tears. “We made history,” the tweet read, suggesting that Allam was overcome with emotion that Hillary Clinton had become the first woman to secure the nomination for president from a major political party. In fact, Allam, a North Carolina delegate and regional field director for the Sanders campaign, was wiping away her tears because Bernie Sanders had conceded the race. “Guess you didn’t get the memo,” she tweeted back to the Clinton people, along with the hashtags #StillSanders #ImanImmigrant and #SupportPalestinianRights.
In fact, there are many Muslim Americans, include the Brooklyn-based activist Linda Sarsour and Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison, who like Allam are working tirelessly to shape the progressive wing of the Democratic party. Many Muslim American Democrats have pushed back on Clinton’s views on the Israel-Palestine conflict and have criticized the Obama administration’s Countering Violent Extremism initiative, for example. Just because the Republican position on Muslims is loathsome does not give the Democrats a pass to use Muslims as props. We should not just be seen but also heard, and in all of our complexity.
None of this is to take away from the profound loss the parents of Humayan Khan have experienced or the sacrifice of their son. But to be a Muslim citizen of the United States, you don’t have to die as a Muslim American. You can live as one, too.
