A Michigan Democratic Senate candidate with documented family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and campaign funding from its American front groups faces zero federal scrutiny — the same agencies that mobilize against school board parents can't seem to investigate actual subversion.
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Michigan's open Senate seat, was asked directly on NBC's "Meet the Press" whether he has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. "No," he replied, insisting neither he nor his family have connections to the international Sunni Islamist network. The public record contradicts him.
According to HotAir, the Washington Free Beacon reported that El-Sayed's half-sister, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, explicitly celebrated those ties. In 2012, Abdelhadi wrote: "Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s." That same year, as the Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi ruled Egypt, Abdelhadi bragged that her "family has long been MB." Their shared mother, Fatten Elkomy, worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency — which the Treasury Department designated a terrorist organization in 2004 for providing "direct financial support" to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. She was working there on 9/11.
Then there's the money. El-Sayed's father-in-law, Jukaku Tayeb, a founding committee member of the Islamic Society of North America, has donated $200,000 to El-Sayed's campaign. Current and former Council on American-Islamic Relations officials have kicked in a similar six-figure sum. Both ISNA and CAIR were named unindicted co-conspirators in the Justice Department's 2008 Holy Land Foundation terror financing bust. The United Arab Emirates designated CAIR a terrorist organization in 2014. The Muslim Brotherhood itself is banned as a terrorist organization in Egypt, the UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia — all U.S. allies.
Fox News framed the story through a different lens, highlighting Zionist Organization of America president Morton Klein's warning that El-Sayed represents a broader pattern of antisemitic voices gaining power in the Democratic Party. Klein noted that El-Sayed refused to call Iran a greater threat than Israel during a Michigan Senate debate, instead saying both are dangerous and that "Israel is as evil as Hamas." Klein criticized Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for endorsing El-Sayed and directing "tens of millions of dollars" to his campaign, along with Jewish Democratic officials like Senator Elissa Slotkin and Attorney General Dana Nessel. "If this guy was unequivocally anti-Black, they would have all condemned him," Klein said. "Why don't they condemn people who hate Jews for no reason whatsoever?"
Fox News omitted the specific family connections and the mother's employment at a Treasury-designated terror charity — the documentary heart of the story. HotAir buried El-Sayed's own counter-claims: the candidate has described Judaism as "a light unto the world" and expressed gratitude for Jewish community contributions.
What neither outlet addressed is the federal enforcement gap. The organizations named in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation case were never prosecuted. The FBI once cut formal ties with CAIR over its Brotherhood connections — then quietly resumed working with the group. A conservative member of Congress told HotAir he fears El-Sayed, if elected, would have access to sensitive intelligence and might share it with hostile actors. That's the open question: not whether El-Sayed can win, but whether any agency in Washington will lift a finger to examine the network trying to elect him.
