A few weeks before white supremacist Jeremy Christian allegedly stabbed two people to death on a Portland train for standing up to racist harassment, Arsalan Bukhari, the executive director of the Washington chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), stood before more than 1,000 people in Bellevue’s opulent Meydenbauer Center. In his eight years working for the largest and most influential Muslim civil-rights organization in the United States, Bukhari had never seen so large a turnout for a local event hosted by the nonprofit. It was an extraordinary success. But as he would point out in his speech, these were extraordinary times.
An illustrious lineup of guests spoke at the May 7 dinner, including Washington State attorney general Bob Ferguson, who mounted a legal challenge to Trump’s Muslim travel ban, and Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father who delivered a prime-time speech on the final night of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.