Khizr Khan, a Virginia Gold Star father whose son Army Captain Humayun Khan was killed in Iraq, campaigns for Hillary Clinton at Croaker's Spot, a restaurant in Norfolk, Va. (Julia Rendleman/The Washington Post)

Khizr Khan, the slain soldier’s father whose criticism of GOP nominee Donald Trump at the Democratic National Convention became a turning point in the 2016 campaign, said Wednesday that he was motivated to speak out by questions he was hearing from Muslim American children.

After anti-Muslim statements by Trump, Khan said, “at gatherings, little children would ask — ‘You are an attorney, are we going to be thrown out of the country?’ ”

“The courage [to speak out] wasn’t ours,” Khan told about 30 members and guests at a mosque in Norfolk, where he was campaigning on behalf of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. “The courage was given to us.”

Khan said he and his wife had privately grieved the war death in Iraq of their son, Army Capt. Humayun Khan, for a dozen years before deciding to become public figures.

On Wednesday, he appeared at Masjid William Salaam in this city, home to the world’s largest naval base, and then at Croaker’s Spot restaurant and at a Democratic Party campaign office.

A Pakistani American lawyer who lives in Charlottesville, Khan also stars in an emotional television advertisement for Clinton, and has made numerous appearances on television and in the news media.

But it was the convention speech — and Trump’s denunciation of him and his wife afterward — that brought the most attention.

“Donald Trump, you’re asking Americans to trust you with their future. Let me ask you, have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy,” Khan said at the convention.

“Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery? Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America. You will see all faiths, genders and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing — and no one.”

After that speech, Humayun Khan’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery became a pilgrimage site of sorts, decorated with flowers, flags and notes from visiting strangers.

The Khans have become one of the nation’s best-known Gold Star military families, a designation given to those whose sons or daughters have been killed in war.

Khan said Wednesday that he has been overwhelmed by the “love and affection from all corners of this country” since he began urging Trump to cease his divisive rhetoric.

“People ask would I do it again,” he said at the mosque, where a man dressed in military fatigues chanted the Muslim call to prayer but there were no other obvious service members present.

“A million times, again and again and again, up until hatred and political bigotry is wiped out of this United States, we will continue to speak.”

The crowd that came to meet Khan at Croaker’s Spot restaurant did not include a lot of military veterans. But those who were there greeted him with enthusiasm.

“He is such a humble and dedicated man and such a fine human being,” said Ellis W. James, who served in the Army in Germany during the Korean War and is supporting Clinton in the presidential race.

Tom Bazar, a Navy veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who also is voting for Clinton, said it was an honor to meet Khan.

“When you meet families of people who were lost, it’s such an honor,” Bazar said. “It’s great that he stood up and said what he believed. That’s what America is all about. “