Families Flock to Grave of U.S. Soldier Whose Muslim Parents Slammed Trump While Controversy Grows

Groups of visitors gathered Sunday at Arlington National Cemetery near the grave of Humayun Khan, the U.S. Army captain whose family is involved in a bitter public dispute with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Khan was killed in 2004 by a suicide bomber in Iraq. His parents spoke out against Trump at the Democratic National Conventional this past week, calling him out for his lack of military service and saying he had "sacrificed nothing," prompting Trump to fire back, saying they had "no right" to criticize him and that he had contributed lots of jobs to the country, and even suggested that Khan's wife was forced into silence on the DNC stage by her husband due to being Muslim.

The public spat, which pits Trump's anti-Muslim rhetoric against the family of a man who died an American war hero, has become one of the biggest stories of the last few days as the presidential campaign heats up.

And it has attracted some attention to the graves of other Muslim soldiers buried at Arlington National Cemetery, with Tom Brokaw recently visiting the grave of Kareem Khan, who was killed in 2007:

Brokaw on Trump's Muslim ban—at Arlington grave of a Muslim-American soldier, last name Khan https://t.co/N23kQfeZzQ pic.twitter.com/VhktpNg58o
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) July 31, 2016

Khizr Khan repeated his call for House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to denounce Trump's remarks.

They expressed support for the Khans and reiterated their opposition to Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims, but neither mentioned Trump by name and neither abandoned his support for the Republican nominee.

In an op-ed published in The Washington Post, Ghazala Khan directly responded to Trump, saying that being Muslim had nothing to do with her decision not to speak at the convention. Rather, she said, she was too distraught to speak and could barely control her emotions while walking on stage.

“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,” she wrote, using a term for the parents of fallen members of the military.

Image via Wikimedia