The Wrath of Mr. Khan
by Hal Lindsey
Regardless of which presidential candidate you’re backing this year, something began at this year’s Democratic National Convention that should be carefully considered. The press has had a field day battering Donald Trump with the words of a Muslim immigrant from Pakistan, Khizr Khan.
Mr. Khan’s son, Captain Humayun Khan, died as an American hero in Iraq in 2004. Senator John McCain described Captain Khan’s death like this. “When a suicide bomber accelerated his vehicle toward a facility with hundreds of American soldiers, Captain Khan ordered his subordinates away from the danger. Then he ran toward it.”
In what may have been the smartest campaign move of the year, the Clinton team asked Captain Khan’s parents, Khizr and Ghazala Khan, to speak at their convention. Despite Mr. Khan’s past support for Sharia law, the Clinton people gave him a prime time slot on the gathering’s biggest night. He spoke English with an earnest, Pakistani accent. The 7-minute speech proved to be a sensation.
His words were bursting with emotion. They grabbed the heart. Politicians and the media took this family’s pain, and turned it into money, votes, and influence. Khan’s righteous indignation took the world by storm. And that’s the problem.
This campaign, more than any other in my memory, is turning on raw emotion — mostly fear and anger. Whether you vote Democrat or Republican, I hope you will base your decision on something more than emotions. I hope you thoughtfully consider each side’s actual positions, and how those positions will impact the future of the United States.
Let’s try to look objectively at what Khizr Khan said at the convention. In the most celebrated moment of the speech, he addressed Donald Trump directly. “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”
Think about what this means. He implied that a candidate cannot speak on the issue of immigration if he or she has not sacrificed a son or daughter in battle. Remove the emotion, and you can see his statement as nonsense. With this criteria, neither Mr. Trump nor Secretary Clinton would qualify to speak to the issue.
The press ridiculed Trump for pointing to his own hard work as a form of sacrifice. It doesn’t compare to Mr. Khan’s loss, but don’t belittle work. It is the primary method of sacrifice for most Americans, including Hillary Clinton. She says she has worked hard in a public career emphasizing the welfare of women and children. Mr. Trump says he worked hard building businesses employing thousands of people who used the wages he paid to take care of their families. What’s wrong with that? Some of the most beautiful sacrifices I have ever seen centered around people working to care for others.
Mr. Khan said, “We cannot solve our problems by building walls.”
Walls won’t solve all problems, but they can help solve some. For instance, Mr. Khan said those words while standing on a platform encircled by a security wall. The wall didn’t replace actual security personnel, but it made their jobs easier. Outside that room, the entire area of the arena stood behind a police cordon. Those walls did not solve all the problems faced by the convention, but they helped solve some of them.
Mr. Khan said, “Donald Trump consistently smears the character of Muslims.” This is not true, as far as I know. But it may feel true to many Muslim-Americans. That’s because Trump recognizes that the common factor among Islamic terrorists is Islam itself. But that fact is beyond dispute.
As a Christian minister, I take this much further than Donald Trump. The radical Islamists are in fact the only ones truly following the actually literal teachings of all the Koran. For that reason, anyone who reveres all the literal Koran as the true message of Allah to humanity is a carrier of terrorism. Most Muslims show no symptoms of taking all the Koran literally. But in a considerable segment of their population, their holy book is absolutely word for word literal. That part of Islam is following the most dangerous ideology on this planet.
The media have been all abuzz about the many Muslims who have given their lives in military service for this country. And like you, I respect them all. But the implication that more Muslims have died than people of other faiths is demonstrably false.
Since 9-11, close to 6000 American servicemen and women have died in action. Last week, the Daily Mail did an article attacking Trump. They found a total of 11 American-Muslims in the U.S. military who have died in action since 9-11. They said some publications report that number might go as high as 15. But since Muslims make up 1% of the population in our military, one might reasonably expect about 60 American-Muslim deaths in action. That would be about 400% more than there actually have been.
There are presently about 2.2 million active-duty and reserve members of the U.S. military. One percent of that is 22,000, but less than 6000 Muslims are actually serving. I’m not complaining. In this country, people are free to serve or not. Lots of great people choose not to. I’m just saying that people should stop implying that American-Muslims are sacrificing more in the armed forces than anyone else. It’s just the opposite.
Khizr Khan’s law firm has a long history with the Clintons. He has a financial interest in U.S. Muslim immigration policy. Though he denies it now, in the past, he has shown support for the idea that the Constitution (which he apparently carries around in his pocket) should be subordinate to Sharia law.
While those things are telling, here’s the bottom-line. Should the U.S. bring in Muslims, or anyone else, from regions of the world where they cannot be properly vetted? This is an enormously important issue, and needs to be addressed in a clear-headed, fact-based manner. We already have allowed into the U.S. thousands of un-vetted illegal immigrants. A few of them have already attacked our allies and us. Unless we act soberly and quickly, it may become too late. May the LORD have mercy on America.
