Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed recently tried to shut down questions about his family’s documented ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and his own reluctance to draw clear lines on radical Islamist networks by invoking John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign. Kennedy faced suspicion that, as a Catholic, he might answer to the Vatican rather than the Constitution. El-Sayed’s comparison does not hold.
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He is not being targeted simply for being Muslim. He is facing legitimate questions about national security, ideology, and fitness for the Senate that any candidate with this record would face. His refusal to answer them directly is the problem.
In a weekend interview on MS NOW, El-Sayed equated scrutiny of his family’s Muslim Brotherhood ties to the anti-Catholic attacks on Kennedy, who, he noted, “was asked about whether or not his allegiance would be to the Constitution or to the pope and the Vatican.” El-Sayed declared, “I will stand for that constitution,” and called it “a crazy thing to assume that somehow I’d have dual loyalties.” This was an evasion, not an answer.
El-Sayed’s half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, posted years ago that “my family has long been MB,” that relatives had been jailed for membership, and that their mother had been active in the Brotherhood as a college student in Egypt in the early 1970s. She later wrote about praying for family members in Egypt who supported the group.
Their mother, Fatten Elkomy, worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency until 2004, when the U.S. Treasury designated it for providing material support to al-Qaeda, Hamas, and other terrorist groups. El-Sayed has dismissed his sister’s posts as “hearsay evidence from a tweet.” His parents separated when he was a toddler, and he was raised primarily by his father and stepmother. But there are clear discrepancies between his flat denials of any family ties and his sister’s contemporaneous statements.
The Catholic Church is not the Muslim Brotherhood. Kennedy faced prejudice against a 2,000-year-old Christian denomination whose American members had long demonstrated loyalty to the United States. The Brotherhood is a 20th-century Islamist political movement founded in Egypt with a well-documented record of producing or inspiring violent terrorist offshoots, including Hamas. Branches of it have been designated by the United States as terrorist organizations or specially designated global terrorists for supporting Hamas. Several Arab governments treat the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist entity.
El-Sayed’s statements equating the Catholic Church and the Muslim Brotherhood are not a defense of religious freedom; they are a clumsy attempt to put his family’s documented Brotherhood ties and his own evasions about them beyond scrutiny.
El-Sayed’s other evasions reinforce this point. He has declined to say whether Iran or Israel poses the greater threat to the United States, calling the question a “ridiculous hypothetical” and stating that both have “proven dangerous in their own way.”
Let’s be clear. Israel is a longstanding American ally. Iran is a theocratic regime that has killed and kidnapped Americans, chants “Death to America,” and backs proxies that attack U.S. partners.
Financial disclosures also show that El-Sayed and his wife own a rental property in Dubai, and his wife owns another in India. He has also said on video that he holds dual citizenship in Egypt and the United States.
El-Sayed’s radical stance on immigration adds further context. In a 2018 interview, El-Sayed said America “owe[s] it to the world to open our doors” and is “better because of it,” and promised that, as governor, he would not use state resources to assist federal immigration enforcement. He has also called for abolishing ICE.
These views stand in sharp contrast to the problems Europe faces from large-scale, poorly vetted migration. This past weekend, France saw some of its worst unrest in years after student-led protests turned into widespread rioting, arson, and looting. While French authorities blamed ultra-left groups and criminals, there was a strong indication that the riots were driven by large-scale migration from the Middle East and North Africa, failed integration, and the difficulties of deporting criminal migrants.
Lloyd Bentsen’s famous line to Dan Quayle in their 1988 vice presidential debate still fits: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
El-Sayed’s effort to cite John F. Kennedy’s Catholic faith to evade these serious questions—family associations with an Islamist movement now under U.S. terrorist designations, a refusal to say Iran is a greater threat than Israel, and a record of advocating uncontrolled migration—explains why many Michiganders and Americans question his fitness for the U.S. Senate. The questions are not about bigotry or religious intolerance. They are vital due diligence for a potential U.S. senator who will be sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and who will have access to the nation’s most sensitive classified information.
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Abdul El-Sayed, you’re no Jack Kennedy.
