Ghazala Khan answers Donald Trump with a moving essay about her son

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

last updated 31 July 2016

In his scattershot response to the viral Democratic National Convention speech that questioned his knowledge of the Constitution, Republican Donald Trump suggested that Ghazala Khan, the mother of a Muslim U.S. soldier who was killed in Iraq, did not join her husband in speaking because her religion would not allow it.

Khan replied to Trump with a moving essay that recounted memories of her son, Captain Humayun Khan, at The Washington Post Sunday morning:

Donald Trump has asked why I did not speak at the Democratic convention. He said he would like to hear from me. 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. [...]I cannot walk into a room with pictures of Humayun. For all these years, I haven't been able to clean the closet where his things are — I had to ask my daughter-in-law to do it. Walking onto the convention stage, with a huge picture of my son behind me, I could hardly control myself. What mother could? Donald Trump has children whom he loves. Does he really need to wonder why I did not speak? [Washington Post]

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.