Viral clips from election campaign trails often cement either the key issues or candidates’ responses to them. That’s exactly what happened when Michigan’s senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive Democrat, was heckled at the town hall, where a young man demanded he disavow the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements, which many consider a terrorist group.
Before Abdul El-Sayed could make history as the first Muslim elected to the US Senate, he endured what critics called one of the most overtly Islamophobic campaigns in modern US politics.
He then paraphrased former US President John F Kennedy’s famous line about his Catholic faith and him being allegiant to the pope. “I’m not running to be a Muslim senator. I’m running for the U.S. Later, the man who heckled El-Sayed was identified as Thomas Teepell, a former aide to the Republican senator Josh Hawley. Teepell’s staff records show he worked with Hawley till February before joining Republican Philip Sarnecki’s Kansas gubernatorial campaign as political director. His Republican opponent suggested he had ties to terrorists and questioned his loyalty to America. Campaign mailers warned that if he were elected, Abdul El-Sayed would bring sharia law to Michigan.
US President Donald Trump branded him a jihadist and compared him to the September 11 hijackers.
Senate and happen to be Muslim,” El-Sayed said. El-Sayed said his campaign proved that “old-fashioned politics can work if you’re willing to do the work. “You chose hate, and Michigan chose hope,” El-Sayed said in his victory speech. He said victory is “not the success” and that “the success is what you’re able to do with the seat.”
