Abdul El-Sayed is not who he says he is. The U.S. Senate candidate wants Michigan voters to believe that he is a conventional progressive Democrat with no ties to or sympathies for Islamic radicalism. The opposite is true. El-Sayed is a radical leftist whose campaign serves as a Trojan horse for a “red-green alliance” of Marxists and Islamists seeking power in Washington.
When an Islamist terrorist attacked Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, in what the FBI called “a Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism purposely targeting the Jewish community and the largest Jewish temple in Michigan,” El-Sayed rationalized the attack, pointing out that the perpetrator had lost family in an Israeli strike in Lebanon and that “hurt people hurt people.” He later said, “To anyone who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I’m really sorry,” adding that it “wasn’t the time for context” — as if a terrorist attack on a synagogue could be justified by any context, much less one targeting American Jews in retaliation for Israeli actions.
When Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a man with the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands, was killed, El-Sayed advised campaign staff that “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today” (a comment for which he has not apologized). When asked in a debate if Israel or Iran posed a bigger threat to America, he said both had “proven dangerous in their own way” — drawing moral equivalence between the world’s worst state sponsor of terror and the Middle East’s lone democracy. He does not supportIsrael’s right to exist and has called it “bloodthirsty” and an “apartheid regime.” Before his primary victory, he appeared at campus rallies with Hasan Piker, a radical streamer who once said “America deserved 9/11” (Piker later apologized) and who has expressed support for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. He has since sought to distance himself from Piker, but has not definitively repudiated him.
El-Sayed also has not condemned the Muslim Brotherhood, branches of which have been designated terror organizations by the United States. In 2011, he wrote an op-ed in the Huffington Post dismissing fears that a Muslim Brotherhood takeover in Egypt would usher in a Hamas-style Islamist dictatorship as “foolish.” When Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt leader Mohamed Morsi became president, he sidelined the judiciary, amassed authoritarian powers, cracked down on the press and sidled up to Iran and Hamas, prompting a popular uprising against the regime.
On “Meet the Press” on Sunday, El-Sayed was asked whether he or his family have any ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. “No,” El-Sayed replied twice. But his half sister, Eman Abdelhadi, a University of Chicago professor, said on X in 2012 that their family “has long been MB” and a year later noted that some relatives had been “jailed” in Egypt for activism in the group. Abdelhadi also said that El-Sayed’s mother, Fatten Elkomy, was a Muslim Brotherhood activist in Egypt before emigrating to the U.S. According to reporting by the Midwesterner, from 1999 to at least 2004 she worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency, which was listed in 2004 by the Treasury Department as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” group after it was found to have provided financing for al-Qaeda and Hamas.
That’s not all. His father-in-law, Tayeb Jukaku, serves on the Founders Committee of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a group that former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote in 2010 was named by the Muslim Brotherhood as a partner in its “grand jihad” and that had a joint bank account which was used to funnel money to Hamas. In 2009, a federal judge ruled that there was “ample evidence” of an association between ISNA and Hamas. (The American Civil Liberties Union, representing ISNA, that same year denied there was evidence connecting ISNA with Hamas, calling the allegation a “public smear.”) El-Sayed has spoken at ISNA conventions, and his father-in-law has contributed $300,000 to the Fighting for Michigan PAC supporting his Senate campaign.
Given his own words and family history, we are supposed to believe that he has no sympathies with Islamist radicalism? Give me a break.
And what about the socialist part of the “red-green alliance”? El-Sayed says he is not a socialist, but he campaigns with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and other prominent democratic socialists and has been endorsed by every member of the socialist “Squad,” including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan). He has spoken at, headlined or raised money at many DSA events since 2017, and has backed much of the DSA agenda — from a wealth tax to tuition-free higher education, free child care, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Green New Deal and Medicare-for-all (which is “socialized” medicine). If that’s capitalism, I can’t imagine how he’d define Marxism.
He is so far left that in 2012, he blasted President Barack Obama, declaring in an op-ed that under Obama “inequality has accelerated and the divide between the haves and have-nots in our country has never been starker.” He also criticized Obama for killing al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki in a drone strike, accusing Obama of expanding an “aimless ‘war on terror’ … where the president can freely order the murder of Americans on foreign soil.”
It would be one thing if El-Sayed openly campaigned on his radical beliefs. But instead, he pretends to be something he’s not, because he knows his real foreign and domestic policy views would be toxic to most Michigan voters. So, he is running a stealth campaign, seeking to downplay his true “red-green” agenda.
This race is bigger than Michigan. Last month, Americans marked the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The idea that Americans would now elect a candidate like El-Sayed to the U.S. Senate is appalling — and his victory would leave an indelible stain on our country.
The post The stealth candidacy of Abdul El-Sayed appeared first on Washington Post.
