Khizr Khan cancels Toronto talk after travel privileges ‘reviewed’
TORONTO — The organizer of a luncheon featuring a speech by the father of an American Muslim soldier killed in Iraq said Monday that the event was cancelled because the man’s “travel privileges are being reviewed.”
Ramsay Talks said Khizr Khan, who has publicly criticized U.S. President Donald Trump for his anti-Muslim rhetoric, was scheduled to be in Toronto today to talk about tolerance, understanding and unity.
“Late Sunday evening Khizr Khan, an American citizen for over 30 years, was notified that his travel privileges are being reviewed,” Ramsay Talks said in a statement on its Facebook page.
The company, which couldn’t be reached immediately for comment, didn’t say who is reviewing Khan’s travel privileges.
Ramsay Talks did, however, include what it said was a comment from Khan in its statement.
“This turn of events is not just of deep concern to me but to all my fellow Americans who cherish our freedom to travel abroad,” Khan was quoted saying in Ramsay Talks’ statement. “I have not been given any reason as to why. I am grateful for your support and look forward to visiting Toronto in the near future.”
In advertising Khan’s speech, Ramsay Talks had said the Harvard-trained lawyer who immigrated to the United States from Pakistan decades ago was going to talk about “what we can do about the appalling turn of events in Washington — so that we don’t all end up sacrificing everything.”
Khan rose to prominence last year when he spoke at the Democratic National Convention about his son, Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who died in Iraq in 2004 trying to protect his unit from a suicide bomber.
Khizr Khan held up his pocket-sized constitution and said Trump had sacrificed “nothing.”
Trump fired back a few weeks before the election saying Khan’s son would still be alive if he had been president in 2004 because he wouldn’t have troops in Iraq — falsely insisting he was opposed to the Iraq War before it started.
Khan has become a public face against Trump’s immigration policies.
“There comes a time in an ordinary citizen’s life where you have to gather all the courage you have and you stand up and speak against tyranny and speak against un-American hate,” Khan said in October.
On Monday, Trump unveiled a revised travel ban that temporarily halts entry to the U.S. for people from six Muslim-majority nations who are seeking new visas and suspends the country’s refugee program.