Gold Star Dad Khizr Khan: Vote for American Values

DEARBORN, MI — Gold Star father Khizr Khan, who held up a pocket Constitution at last summer’s Democratic National Convention and challenged Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to read and understand it, urged general election voters to support traditional American values in a speech in Dearborn Thursday.

Khan, a Muslim immigrant from Pakistan whose son, U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan was killed in Iraq 12 years ago, was honored at the Arab American Civil Rights League’s fifth annual Fight for Justice dinner for his bold move at Hillary Clinton’s nominating convention.

Fittingly, a copy of the Constitution was placed at each table at the gala honoring the Virginia couple at the Ford Community & Performing Arts Center.

Khan said he and his wife, co-honoree Ghazala Khan, who was unable to attend the gala, have been moved by the outpouring of support from Americans since the speech in which he blistered at Trump’s call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States.

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The support shown his family since Trump picked a bizarre Twitter fight with the Gold Star parents is “an indication of the goodness of America,” Khan said Thursday, according to a report in The Detroit News. Trump had tweeted, among other things, that Khan had “viciously attacked” him, a strategy that sent his poll numbers into a temporary free fall.

Khan did not specifically mention the Republican presidential candidate, but said attacks during on Muslims, Mexican immigrants and other minorities during a tense election season amount to “vote pandering.”

“We are not for building walls; we are not for divisions,” Khan said. “Make sure that this election, you go to your precinct with this thought in mind: that today, ‘I am going to stand for the values of America that we practice in this community.’ ”

During his speech and in interviews with the Detroit Free Press, Khan praised Dearborn, where about 40 percent of residents are Arab-American, as “a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful pluralistic community where all faiths and religions and cultures and ethnicities live together, enjoy the city and the environment.

“The richness of the culture is exemplary,” he said. “I wish we had more cities ... like Dearborn where tolerance, patience, multicultural, holding each other's hands to move forward, was practiced.”

Here’s the speech from the Democratic National Convention.

Photo courtesy of Arab American Civil Rights League