This past week­end saw Colin Pow­ell endorse Barack Obama for pres­i­dent on NBC’s Meet the Press.

How­ever, the most impor­tant and touch­ing part of his speech came when he dis­cussed Muslim-Americans:

Is there some­thing wrong with being a Mus­lim in this coun­try? The answer is no. That’s not Amer­ica. Is there some­thing wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believ­ing he or she could be pres­i­dent? Yet I have heard senior mem­bers of my own party drop the sug­ges­tion that he is a Mus­lim and he might be asso­ci­ated with ter­ror­ists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel strongly about this par­tic­u­lar point because of a pic­ture I saw in a mag­a­zine. It was a photo essay about troops who were serv­ing in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one pic­ture, at the tail end of this photo essay, was of a mother at Arling­ton Ceme­tery and she had her head on the head­stone of her son’s grave. And as the pic­ture focused in, you could see the writ­ing on the head­stone, and it gave his awards — Pur­ple Heart, Bronze Star — showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death, he was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the head stone, it didn’t have a Chris­t­ian cross. It didn’t have a Star of David. It had a cres­cent and star of the Islamic faith.

And his name was Kareem Rashad Sul­tan Khan. And he was an Amer­i­can. He was born in New Jer­sey. He was four­teen years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he could serve his coun­try and he gave his life.

via Link Banana