As a candidate placed at the center of what researchers say are the worst Islamophobic attacks seen since the aftermath of 9/11, many would expect Abdul El-Sayed to simply defend himself and move on.
Instead, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan has repeatedly asked those who question his positions on Israel, the Muslim Brotherhood and his faith to explain the premise of their investigation. Rather than let others test his loyalties, he tried to test their assumptions.
The clearest example is a town hall exchange from this weekend that has been viewed more than 50 million times. A man in the crowd asked him to disavow the Muslim Brotherhood. “Of course, yes, absolutely,” El-Sayed said. Then: “What are you implying? Do you think I wouldn’t do it?”
For five minutes he stayed at that, comparing the question to the doubts people once had about JFK’s Catholicism, and asking the man if he would disavow reading religious doctrine into American law. The man said he wouldn’t do it. El-Sayed told him that he was the one who had to understand the constitution. The room applauds.
The man turned out to be Thomas Teepell, a former aide to Republican Sen. Josh Hawley. His father’s company received $250,000 from a nonprofit organization for “canvassing and influencer marketing” against El-Sayed, according to an FEC filing, although there is no showing the son was paid. This connection did not establish that the question was coordinated, but it added another dimension to an exchange that showed El-Sayed’s preferred method in action.
His direct approach earned him a nickname: “Mean Mamdani,” or “Meandami.” While New York City Mayor and fellow Muslim Zohran Mamdani woos people with warmth, El-Sayed takes on his critics head-on. Both have made establishment resistance part of their political identity, but El-Sayed sees the confrontation itself as a way to expose what he sees as a rigged political debate.
It’s an approach the Democratic establishment doesn’t really know what to do with.
When Mamdani-backed challengers defeated establishment favorites in New York’s primaries, the party’s House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, downplayed the victories. In Michigan, state Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Sen. Gary Peters endorsed El-Sayed’s rival for the Democratic nomination, Haley Stevens, and more than $60 million in outside money, mostly from pro-Israel groups, flowed to her. El-Sayed won by about a point and a half, after challenging the American Israel Public Affairs Commission (Aipac) to “come for me.”
His primary victory challenged the assumption that a Democrat who confronts powerful donors over Israel must pay a prohibitive price.
During the primary, an interview with CNN’s Kasie Hunt summed up the same dynamic. Hunt asked three times whether Israel had the right to exist. “I’m not going to play this trap game,” El-Sayed said, adding, “No one has ever asked me whether or not I think Palestine has a right to exist.”
He challenged why his position on the existence of Israel was treated as a test of political legitimacy while the equivalent question on Palestine was not asked. The real question is whether Israel is entitled to “our tax money,” he suggested.
After winning the primary, Fox’s Jesse Watters spent 25 minutes with El-Sayed on ice, sharia law and transgender issues. “You want to bring up this whole culture war,” El-Sayed told him, returning repeatedly to the prices. The strategy is to prevent his opponents from defining the election around his identity and to focus it on the economy and health care.
But the tactic doesn’t always work. On Meet the Press, when asked if he or his family had any ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, he said no twice. The Washington Free Beacon then dug up his half-sister’s 2012 articles about their mother’s activism with the group in the 1970s. There is no evidence that El-Sayed participated, and he told NBC, “I wasn’t raised by my mother.” But he also called the questions “not serious” and asked the host if he was “insinuating that somehow I was lying.”
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All this takes place in a hostile context. Islamophobic posts naming him jumped nearly 1,900% in the week after his primary victory, according to the Center for the Study of Organized Hate. Senator Tommy Tuberville called him a terrorist within hours, and Donald Trump called him a “jihadist.” A Rutgers report released Tuesday, covering more than 30 cases since 2001, finds the same pattern has been used repeatedly against Muslim applicants.
The media response to El-Sayed’s viral exchange at town hall offered another example of the divide. CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford praised the interrogator and called El-Sayed’s response “clean,” then deleted the post and apologized. The episode raised questions about how a Muslim candidate’s refusal to accept an innuendo can itself be presented as evidence against him.
CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss reportedly encouraged the network’s journalists to pursue stories related to El-Sayed’s alleged sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood. (A CBS News spokesperson told Semafor, “We will let our journalism – not baseless accusations – speak for itself.”)
For Muslim candidates and those from the Middle East, the burden can go beyond proving that they are capable of doing the job, but also proving that their religion, family and foreign policy views do not make them a threat. A legitimate review of a candidate’s file is necessary; treating Muslim identity as grounds for suspicion is another matter.
El-Sayed’s confrontational style is an attempt to force this distinction into the open, even if his instinct to counterattack can sometimes work against him.
His primary victory suggested that Democratic voters wanted more than a candidate who shared their policy preferences. They wanted one who was willing to take on donors and party leaders who they said had ignored their values.
Now all of Michigan has a say.
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