Suhail A. Khan is the Senior Fellow for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Institute for Global Engagement.[1] Khan was previously a senior political appointee with the Bush administration, and a conservative political activist in Washington, D.C.[1]
Contents |
Khan was born in Boulder, Colorado, to parents who emigrated to Wyoming and Colorado from southern India.[2] The oldest of five children, Suhail grew up in California, earned his high school diploma from St. Lawrence Academy in Santa Clara in 1987 (a private Catholic college preparatory school), a B.A. in political science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1991 and his J.D. from the University of Iowa in 1995.[3][2]
Khan served as Policy Director and Press Secretary for U.S. Congressman Tom Campbell (R-CA), working closely on legislation relating to health antitrust reform, religious freedom, the preservation of the Second Amendment, tort reform, gun control, the reform of race-based affirmative action, and the 1998 impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives.[3][4] After the 2000 elections, he aided the White House Office of Public Liaison in the President’s outreach to the conservative, think-tank, military and veteran and Asian-American communities.[4][5]
He served as Assistant to the Secretary for Policy under U.S. Secretary Mary Peters at the U.S. Department of Transportation, where he was awarded the Secretary’s Team Award in 2005[5] and the Gold Medal for Outstanding Achievement in 2007.[6][7]
In a volunteer capacity, Khan was an active participant in the RNC’s 72-hour program and deployed to key races in states including Colorado, Washington, Iowa, Louisiana, Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.
Khan serves on the Board of Directors for the American Conservative Union[6], the Indian American Republican Council[7],[8] the Islamic Free Market Institute, and on the interfaith Buxton Initiative Advisory Council.[9] He speaks regularly at conferences and venues such as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the Council for National Policy (CNP), the Harbour League,[10] and the National Press Club and has contributed to publications such as the Washington Post/Newsweek Forum On Faith [8], the Washington Post[9], Foreign Policy [10], and Human Events [11].
Khan was interviewed [12] by Pastor Bob Roberts of Dallas, Texas, where he discussed Muslim-Christian interaction and his experience serving in the White House, and has appeared on the BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, CSPAN, and MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show as a conservative commenter.[13][11] Khan's regular opinion column appears on the Daily Caller news and opinion website. [14]
At the 2010 annual CPAC convention, Khan was awarded the Young Conservative Coalition's Buckley Award for his grassroots leadership in establishing the Conservative Inclusion Coalition (CIC), an organization dedicated to promoting the conservative message to Americans of all ethnic, racial and faith backgrounds. [15]
In August, 2010, Khan joined Catholic University Professor Marshall Breger in leading a visit by major Muslim American faith and community leaders to Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps. [16] Upon returning to the U.S., the delegation issued a statement condemning Holocaust-denial and anti-Semitism. [17] The delegation included U.S. Special Envoy on Anti-Semitism Hannah Rosenthal, U.S. Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) and White House Counsel Rashad Hussain, and Rabbi Jack Bemporad of the Center for Interreligious Understanding (CIU) of New Jersey. [18]
At CPAC 2011, bloggers Pamela Geller and David Horowitz accused Khan and Grover Norquist of secret ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. [19] [20] Blogger Frank Gaffney has also accused Khan of such ties. [21] Their allegations were called baseless by the Center for American Progress' Fear, Inc. report, which documents their ties to a small network of alleged Islamophobic extremists. [22]