Last Thursday the 2016 Democratic National Convention wrapped up with a night of emotional, rousing speeches, including one given by Khizr Khan, a Muslim American lawyer.  Khan’s son, Humayun Khan, was a captain in the US Army who died while serving in Iraq in a car bombing as he was trying to rescue fellow troops.

Khizr appeared on stage at the convention with Ghazala Khan, his wife, and denounced Republican nominee Trump in a speech that prompted backlash from the nominee and triggered a social media frenzy.

Khan called Trump out on his immigration policy proposals — namely his plan for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Khizr noted that such a policy been in effect, Humayun would not have been able to serve his country; he then addressed the nominee, asking if he’d ever been to Arlington Cemetery. “Go look at the graves of the brave patriots who died defending America … you will see all faiths, genders and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing and no one,” Khan said. He then asked if Trump had ever read the Constitution, taking out his own his pocket-sized version and offering to lend it to the presidential candidate.

Read more: Pocket Constitutions Sell Out After Trump-Khan Dispute

In response to Khan’s comments, Trump told ABC News “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices.” By Saturday afternoon the satirical hashtag #TrumpSacrifices was trending.

However, what largely caught Trump’s attention was not what Khizr said, but rather what Ghazala did not say. On Friday Trump told The New York Times, “I’d like to hear his wife say something.” “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,” he added during an interview with ABC News. The statements are widely being interpreted as expressions of anti-Islamic sentiment and pandering to a stereotype of Muslim women as the subordinates of their husbands.

Ghazala has since penned a heartfelt op-ed for the Washington Post in which she explained that she chose not to speak at the convention, “because without saying a thing, all the world, all America, felt [her] pain.”

“I am a Gold Star mother. Whoever saw me felt me in their heart,” she wrote. “Donald Trump has children whom he loves. Does he really need to wonder why I did not speak? … [He] said that maybe I wasn’t allowed to say anything. That is not true. My husband asked me if I wanted to speak … Husband and wife are part of each other… When Donald Trump is talking about Islam, he is ignorant.”

The Muslim Public Affairs Council and other U.S. Muslim groups now encouraging Muslim women to join their campaign to let their voices be heard through social media by using the hashtag #CanYouHearUsNow.


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TopicsCitizenshipWomen's EmpowermentDonald TrumpPresidential ElectionUS Elections

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Muslim Women Ask Trump #CanYouHearUsNow?

By Daniele Selby