In the wake of the now-concluded Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, one speaker at the event continues to receive media attention for his provocative, calculated remarks to the audience, most of whom doubtlessly did not know the full story that went along with his address.
The speaker in question was Khizr Khan, a Pakistani-American lawyer and so-called “Gold Star” family member (a “Gold Star” designation goes back to World War I, when families who lost a loved one attached a gold star to the service flag they flew outside their homes during the war).
Khan stood next to his wife Ghazala (who did not speak) and delivered a speech about his son Humayun, a fallen Army captain, who served his country in Iraq and was killed by a car bomb there in 2004.
He then accused Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump of racism over Trump’s plans to implement a policy of banning Muslims from entering the United States — specifically those Muslims hailing from countries which are known to be sponsors of terrorism.
Khan took out a pocket-sized version of the U.S. Constitution and held it up, claiming that Trump’s planned policy was unconstitutional. Addressing Trump, he angrily asserted, “Let me ask you: have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy… Have you 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.”
As it turns out, Khan’s claim of unconstitutionality is false — in 1952, Congress specifically granted U.S. presidents the ability to bar aliens entry to the U.S. based on race, religion, national origin, age, sex and/or any number of multiple factors.
Trump took umbrage to the speech and the symbolism, tweeting during Khan’s speech that Khan had attacked him personally. In an interview with former Clinton advisor and current ABC news host George Stephanopoulos, Trump reacted strongly, saying, “We’ve had a lot of problems with radical Islamic terrorism.” Trump pointed out that Khan’s wife said nothing during her time on the stage, proof of the subservience of women in Islam.
Trump later released a statement to the press, which read, “Captain Humayun Khan was a hero to our country. The real problem here are the radical Islamic terrorists who killed him. [Khizr Khan] has no right to stand in front of millions of people and claim I have never read the Constitution (which is false).”
The media had a field day, accusing the business magnate of dishonoring the veteran’s service and family, claiming that Trump had crossed a line that went beyond political partisanship. MSNBC compared the Republican candidate to Nazis and white supremacists. President Obama said that Trump was “unfit” to serve as president because of the matter.
Failed GOP presidential candidate and former Florida governor Jeb Bush claimed that Trump was “unhinged.” Even some committed Republicans such as Arizona Senator John McCain and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham decried Trump’s remarks and called on Trump to disclaim them.
Trump — to his credit — did not back down from his remarks, and instead pointed out several caveats.
First of all, the Khans have deep legal and political connections to the Clintons. Khizr Khan spent nearly a decade toiling for giant Washington, D.C. law firm Hogan Lovells LLP, which had until 2016 done political lobbying for the Saudi Arabian government and legal work for the Clintons themselves — including their tax returns and patents for pieces of Hillary Clinton’s illicit and insecure private email server.
As has been reported in numerous outlets, Saudi Arabia (where nearly all of the 9/11 hijackers hailed from) is one of the biggest donors to the Clinton Foundation, giving between $10 to $25 million over the years, money that the Clintons have refused to return to the kingdom despite the public urging of Trump.
Khan studied in Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s. His involvement at Hogan Lovells apparently was “firm-wide,” according to his own description and included work for the specific firm partner handling the Clintons’ taxes, Howard Topaz.
It should be noted that during Khan’s tenure, Hogan Lovells was also home to current Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who infamously refused to indict Hillary Clinton over her email server scandal just a month ago.
In a Trump hit piece regarding the Khan affair on CNN, commentator Kate Bolduan admitted she hadn’t known Khan worked for Hogan Lovells, a major oversight for a mainstream news outlet. Other news stories about the speech also omitted the highly significant information, which is plainly available via Google.
In the meantime, to no fanfare, Khizr Khan deleted the website of his law firm, K.M. Khan Law Office, which specializes in high-end Muslim immigration (in some circles known as “buying visas”) — proof that Khan has monetarily benefitted from this controversial practice.
In fact, the EB5 visa program, which Khan’s law firm assisted immigrants with, is so fraught with corruption that Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa made a statement about it earlier this year:
“Maybe it is only here on Capitol Hill—on this island surrounded by reality—that we can choose to plug our ears and refuse to listen to commonly accepted facts. The Government Accountability Office, the media, industry experts, members of congress, and federal agency officials, have concurred that the program is a serious problem with serious vulnerabilities. Allow me to mention a few of the flaws — there are also classified reports that detail the national security, fraud and abuse. Our committee has received numerous briefings and classified documents to show this side of the story. The enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wrote an internal memo that raises significant concerns about the program. One section of the memo outlines concerns that it could be used by Iranian operatives to infiltrate the United States. The memo identifies seven main areas of program vulnerability, including the export of sensitive technology, economic espionage, use by foreign government agents and terrorists, investment fraud, illicit finance and money laundering.”
In an interview with Jim Acosta on CNN, Khan stated, almost unbelievably, that he is of the opinion that terrorism has “nothing to do with Islam.”
Further, Khan is on record as having published papers that state that he believes Muslim sharia law trumps the “man-made” U.S. Constitution in terms of legitimacy. “The invariable and basic rules of Islamic law are only those prescribed in the Shari’ah,” Khan has written.
“All other juridical works… must always be subordinated to the Shari’ah… [The Quran] is the absolute authority from which springs the very conception of legality and every legal obligation.”
In 1983, Khan wrote an overwhelmingly positive review of an Islamic book, in which he praised pro-jihad legal advisor Allah K. Brohi, a minister of the law and religious affairs under Pakistani leader General Zia ul-Haq, also known as the father of the Taliban.
Khan admired Brohi’s beliefs about human rights in Islam, despite their including the right to mutilate and kill any person who violates Islamic law and the right of Islamic men to beat their wives for “unseemly” behavior.
Brohi was well known in Pakistan for helping to form hundreds of Islamic madrasas, or strict religious schools well known for training future jihadis, and for restoring Sharia legal punishments like amputations for theft and adultery charges for rape victims who could not produce four male witnesses of their “crimes.”
Brohi and Zia also compelled Pakistani judges to consult religious mullahs on all judgments to ensure that they complied with Sharia law.
“Divinely ordained punishments have to be inflicted,” Brohi insisted, “and there is very little option for the judge called upon to impose [Sharia punishments], if facts and circumstances are established that the [punishment] in question has been transgressed, to refuse to impose the punishment,” Brohi stated. Such punishments under sharia can include beheading, stoning and flogging. Brohi was very clear that “the individual has to be sacrificed… Collectivity has a special sanctity attached to it in Islam.”
In his book review, Khan wrote, “The keynote speech of Dr. A.K. Brohi, former Pakistani minister of legal and religious affairs, is a hallmark in this book. It successfully explains the Islamic concepts of ‘right’ and ‘just’ in comparison to their Christian and Judaic counterpart.”
He goes on to say that, “Brohi argues convincingly for the establishment of a moral value system before guarantees can be given for any kind of rights. To illustrate the point he notes, ‘There is no such thing as human right in the abstract.’”
The review that Khan wrote was published in the respected Texas International Law Journal. It lists Khan as a “director” of a local Islamic center in Houston.
Further writings by Khan have been cited in multitudes of Islamic law articles and used in Islamic law courses. He’s listed as the author of an in-depth “Legal Index of the Quran” as well as other papers defending Middle Eastern oil-trading organization OPEC.
As opposed to Islamic law, Khan’s command of the U.S. Constitution appears less well documented. Perhaps this is because Khan went to law school at Punjab University in Pakistan?
“If I can just say, it was an absolute mistake, the more we learn about Khan, to assume that the father was just as patriotic as his war-hero son,” argues former Hoover Institution fellow and New York Post columnist Paul Sperry.
“And Republicans were stupid to create a no-fire zone around him. I mean, this guy is not the champion of the Constitution and Western principles we were told he was. It turns out he’s not an expert on the Constitution; he’s an expert on sharia law, which makes an absolute mockery of the Constitution.”
Certainly, the document created by the Founding Fathers is one to which Khizr Khan appears to have far less devotion, a fact that makes you wonder why the Clintons and the Democrats chose him as a speaker on the final night of their national convention. Could it perhaps have something to do with the money Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern states have given the Clintons?
That the younger Khan died in service of his country is not in doubt; however, in light of these new revelations, the Democrats’ choice of the senior Khan as a speaker at such a high-profile and publicized event appears to be most curious.
