The mother of far-left Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed spent years working for an organization the U.S. Treasury Department designated a "global terrorist" entity for funneling money to Osama bin Laden, Hamas, and the Taliban — and the American press has treated it as a footnote.
If a Republican candidate's parent held a half-decade tenure at a group that directly financed the 9/11 mastermind, it would dominate every channel for weeks. El-Sayed carries a D, so the silence speaks volumes about whose connections get scrutiny and whose get buried.
According to the New York Post, El-Sayed's birth mother, Fatten Fathy Elkomy, worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency from 1999 until at least 2004 — the same year the Treasury Department designated IARA a "specially designated global terrorist" organization. Treasury alleged that IARA "provided direct financial support" to bin Laden, stating that "overseas branches IARA provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to UBL in 1999." The group also allegedly supported Hamas and Taliban fighters.
In 2007, the Justice Department charged IARA-US for illegally transferring funds to Iraq. The organization pleaded guilty in 2016 to conspiring to violate sanctions by funneling nearly $1.4 million to Iraq and agreed to dissolve.
Elkomy was never accused of wrongdoing, and no one cited in the federal case was charged with terrorism-related crimes. She denied any IARA connection to terrorists in a 2004 interview, telling the St. Louis Post-Dispatch she was "serving orphans and children with at least one deceased parent, and it breaks my heart they're not going to get any help."
But the candidate himself has made "little to no mention" of Elkomy throughout his campaign, according to The Midwesterner, which first reported the connection. El-Sayed has instead consistently referenced his father and step-mother. Elkomy eventually returned to the U.S. and works as a nurse practitioner in Missouri.
Meanwhile, Breitbart reported that El-Sayed — who abides by Sharia law in his personal life — recently compared himself to Jesus on a podcast, declaring that "Jesus, peace and blessings be upon him, was considered radical in his time too." He has also campaigned with far-left streamer Hasan Piker, who claimed America "deserved 9/11," and his platform is backed by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Rashida Tlaib.
RNC spokesperson Hunter Lovell called El-Sayed's ideology "radical terrorist-sympathizing." A Senate counterterrorism expert also warned that his candidacy "raises homeland security concerns," according to Breitbart.
The question isn't whether Elkomy knew what her employer was up to — she was never charged. The question is why a man seeking a Senate seat has a direct family tie to a bin Laden-funded organization, and the institutions that claim to police power can't be bothered to ask him about it.
