National Review Online
Friday, October 23, 2026
As the Michigan Senate race enters the home stretch and
Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed’s radical views and associations are
garnering more attention, he and his allies are using familiar cries of bigotry
to stifle a closer examination of his record.
Christyna Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Democratic-led
Senate Majority PAC, accused Republicans of waging a campaign of “casual Islamophobia.” Bill Clinton said, “I’m tired of people denigrating Muslims because
they’re Muslim.” El-Sayed compared himself to JFK, noting the first Catholic
president had to overcome charges he would be more loyal to the Vatican than
the U.S. Constitution.
As an infant at the time of JFK’s assassination, former
Representative Mike Rogers, El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, was not old enough
to have known Jack Kennedy, but we feel confident in saying that El-Sayed is no
Jack Kennedy.
JFK served his nation honorably in World War II and
performed heroically in saving his crew when the boat he commanded, the PT-109,
was sunk by a Japanese destroyer. Those questioning his loyalty to America were
doing so purely on the basis of his faith.
El-Sayed, on the other hand, has built up a record of
extreme views and associations, and has lied about them. The attacks on him on
these grounds are fair game.
As we detailed in a previous editorial, despite his claims of having no ties to
the Muslim Brotherhood, there is ample evidence that his mother and other
family relations did.
While a defender might argue that he can’t be held
accountable for his family members, the associations are consistent with his
own record. In 2012, he signed an open letter to Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim
Brotherhood leader and president of Egypt at the time, which said, “We, leaders
of the Egyptian community, support the revolutionary decisions taken by the
president, and we call on him to purge the media and the police as quickly as
possible.”
El-Sayed decided to hold multiple rallies with Hasan Piker, one of
the leading antisemitic podcasters in America. Piker has claimed that
“America deserved 9/11” and regularly defends terrorist groups. He said Hamas
is “a thousand times better” than Israel, that he did not have
“a single issue with Hezbollah,” and that what the Houthis were doing was “not
only moral, but it’s just.” The events with Piker didn’t happen long ago, but
in this very Senate race.
El-Sayed, too, has equated Israel to Hamas and refused to say that Iran, the
leading sponsor of global terrorism, is a greater threat to the U.S. than
Israel.
According to the New York Times, by the way, while
at the University of Michigan, he was president of the Muslim Students
Association, an organization founded by the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1960s.
His campaign waves off questions about his letter to
Morsi, and in a viral clip, he answered a question at a town hall about whether
he disavows the Muslim Brotherhood with a quick, rote disavowal followed by a
long defense of the free exercise of religion.
In fending off questions about his family’s associations
and his own views, he often portrays himself as a committed defender of the
Constitution, which is rich coming from him. El-Sayed has called for packing
the Court and, in an unearthed YouTube video, called for scrapping the Second
Amendment.
The question about his campaign isn’t whether someone can
be a faithful Muslim and hold public office, but whether El-Sayed deserves to
serve in the United States Senate, and given his views and rank dishonesty, the
answer should be a resounding “no.”
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