Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. falsely claimed on Monday that Arabs did not win major global awards and “don’t produce literature,” remarks that came as President Trump and his allies step up anti-Muslim messaging in the final days of the midterms.
Speaking at a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Mich., Mr. Kennedy said at first that the “Muslim religion produced a golden age” in which “Islamic lands were the center, the foundation for art and literature and science and engineering, and they were highly tolerant and pluralistic and cosmopolitan.”
But then he argued that the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist political movement founded in 1928, had “created stagnant societies,” falsely claiming that Arabs no longer produced award-winning work.
“That’s why you don’t see any Muslims, any Arab Muslims winning the Nobel,” Mr. Kennedy said. “There’s 500 million Arabs in the world, and yet they don’t produce — they don’t win the Nobel Prize, they don’t win the Field prize, they don’t win the Wolf Prize. They don’t produce literature.”
Arabs have in fact won all of these prizes, including as recently as 2025. Clips of Mr. Kennedy’s comments spread widely online, with some angry users sharing names of Arab and Muslim winners of major awards.
Mr. Kennedy was seeking to help Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee for Senate in Michigan, who was also at the event at the Kent County G.O.P. headquarters. In recent days, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Trump and other Republicans have intensified attacks on the Democratic nominee, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, over his faith and background. At the event, both Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Rogers claimed that Dr. El-Sayed had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which Dr. El-Sayed has disavowed. The United States designated certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations last year, after previously treating branches of the movement as legitimate political parties.
If elected, Dr. El-Sayed would be the first Muslim senator; his aides have said that Republicans’ widespread claims that he has ties to overseas terrorist groups are racist and Islamophobic. Polls indicate a tight race that could be pivotal to Senate control.
Peter Hotez, a professor at the Baylor College of Medicine who specializes in vaccine development and tropical medicine, said his “brilliant” former colleague, the Egyptian-born Arab Nobel Prize winner Ahmed Zewail, who died in 2016, “would disagree” with Mr. Kennedy’s statements.
“God rest his soul he didn’t have to endure this,” Mr. Hotez wrote on X.
On Sunday, Mr. Trump claimed in a string of Islamophobic remarks that Dr. El-Sayed and Democrats would “invite hordes of jihadis to our shores” if Mr. Rogers lost. This month, Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, made an inflammatory comment that Dr. El-Sayed slept in an Osama “bin Laden jersey.” Mr. Rogers, who was present at both events, has pushed hard to make false claims and pointed questions about Dr. El-Sayed’s background a central issue of the campaign.
Abby Ronson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Rogers, said on Monday of Dr. El-Sayed, “This race isn’t about how he prays.”
“Mike wore the uniform so Americans can pray however they want,” she said, referring to Mr. Rogers’s service in the Army. “This race is about dangerous ideologies that Michigan will reject next week.”
Mr. Kennedy, the health secretary, has in the past made inflammatory remarks about the Holocaust, Jews and Chinese people, and he is known for promoting unfounded conspiracy theories.
This year, he has crisscrossed the country to stump for Republicans in difficult midterm races. He was in Michigan both for official business and the campaign event, holding a news conference at a Grand Rapids health facility for the Department of Health and Human Services before speaking alongside Mr. Rogers.
The health department did not respond to a request for comment.
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