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Islamic State Calls DNC Speaker Khizr Khan’s Slain Son An ‘Apostate’

Islamic State has called slain Army Captain Humayun Khan an ‘apostate,’ 12 years after he died following a suicide bombing in Iraq, while serving the U.S.A.

At the recently concluded Democratic National Conference, soldier Humayun’s father, Khizr Khan, had appeared with his wife, Ghazala. The speech delivered by Khan was not only clear in its rebuke of Donald Trump, but also posed to him the question of whether he has sacrificed anyone in the same way that the Khan’s have sacrificed their son.

Trump responded in a fashion that invoked widespread anger from both naysayers and his supporters. He first questioned the silence of Ghazala, implying that she was not allowed to speak on the podium because she was a Muslim woman. He then alleged that he too had made sacrifices of no small proportion for the good of America.

However, the comparisons drawn by Trump has led the Khans to respond with grief over the Republican presidential nominee’s lack of empathy. And their apparent tastelessness has brought Khizr Khan’s speech to greater spotlight that it was perhaps destined for.

The four-day DNC wrapped up with the memory of the Army parents’ startling admission that if people like Donald Trump came to power, Humayun — a Muslim American belonging to the demographic that Trump actively seeks to keep out of the country — might not have been able to serve the U.S.

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Khizr Khan pauses at the grave of his son who died while serving in Iraq at Arlington National Cemetery in 2011. Section 60 is the final resting place of those service members killed during the War on Terror and buried in Arlington. [Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images]
However, the rekindling of the conversation on Humayun Khan and his death has incited a response from the Islamic State. As reported by Reuters, the terrorist outfit has denounced him as someone who betrays his own faith and religion.

The Islamic State’s online magazine, Dabiq, featured a photograph of the captain’s tombstone at Arlington in Virginia and ran a message under it, asking followers of Islam to ”Beware of dying as an apostate.”

Islamic State, through the voice of the unnamed author of the article, wrote on the importance of resisting the urge of succumbing to Western influence.

“Reject these calls to disunity and come together. Live the life of Islam, for which you have already left the path of falsehood. You are behind enemy lines, able to strike them where it hurts them most.”

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Members of the Third U.S. Infantry Regiment place American flags at the graves of U.S. soldiers buried at Arlington National Cemetery in May. [Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images]
The Islamic State’s repudiation of Humayun Khan will go further against Donald Trump’s hyperbolic fear-mongering against American Muslims.

While Trump had aimed to turn the tables of pointing fingers at Muslim practices of silencing women — by tastelessly pointing to the soldier’s mother — his attempts to consolidate America’s Muslim population as an arm of Islamic terrorism in the Middle East has been thwarted by the Islamic State’s call to beware of the same example set by a person belonging to the same group that Trump wishes to alienate.

The Daily Beast writer Katie Zavadsky also noted the similarity in tone and timing of the two sources that defamed Humayun Khan.

The renouncement by the Islamic State comes in the wake of Ghazala Khan’s searing op-ed on the Washington Post, where she speaks out against Donald Trump’s remarks on her silence on the stage.

“…[W]ithout 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.”

[Photo by Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images]

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