Khizr Khan’s journey from Pakistan to DNC

WASHINGTON: Khizr Khan and his wife Ghazala were difficult to miss as they moved about the Democratic National Convention: he is very tall, and she wore a distinctive

WASHINGTON: Khizr Khan and his wife Ghazala were difficult to miss as they moved about the Democratic National Convention: he is very tall, and she wore a distinctive salwar-kurta. But hardly anyone took note.

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That was before they took the stage and he delivered Donald Trump a brief but profound and powerful rebuke for his remarks against Muslims that have outraged people around the world.

Khan, whose son, US Army Captain Humayun Khan, died in a suicide car bombing in Iraq in 2004, went on to tell Trump,“You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”

Neither Trump, who has said he wanted to “hit a number of those speakers” critical of him at the Democratic convention, nor his campaign, has responded to Khan’s remarks yet.

Khan and Ghazala were born and brought up in Pakistan, and then moved to Dubai, where their two elder sons were born — Humayun was the second. Their third was born in the US.

Aftab Siddiqui, also a Pakistani-American, said Khan’s speech will help in “softening of American Muslim perception in the society”. The community has sought to address the issue through increasing out reach and now, faced with Trump’s remarks, mobilising the community to vote to defeat him.