Abdul El-Sayed Wins Michigan Senate Race as Muslim Brotherhood Questions Persist
By Rachel O’Donoghue
Abdul El-Sayed has just made history. On November 3, the Michigan Democrat defeated Republican Mike Rogers to become the first Muslim elected to the United States Senate. But as he prepares to take his seat in Washington, questions about his past support for Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood president, his family's history with the Islamist movement, and his relationships with organizations historically associated with the Brotherhood deserve far more scrutiny than they have received.
Those questions are not new. Nearly a decade ago, when El-Sayed was 32 and just months into Donald Trump's first presidency, he had his sights set on becoming Michigan's governor. In August 2017, The Guardian was asking whether this “charismatic Muslim doctor” might be “the new Obama.”
Journalist Drew Philp's fawning profile compared El-Sayed's rhetorical style to that of a young Barack Obama, devoting considerably more attention to the quirky details of his upbringing than to any meaningful interrogation of his political views. Readers learned about his Egyptian immigrant father remarrying a white Protestant woman who converted to Islam, and about uncles who learned to prepare halal venison. They heard far less about the substance and implications of his political positions.
At a campaign stop, one of the first questions El-Sayed faced, Philp reported, was about Sharia law. Such concerns, naturally, were the product of “far-right websites preying on the uninformed and fearful.” Never mind that, eight years earlier, El-Sayed had told The New York Times of his religious “obligation” to follow Sharia-compliant financial practices when obtaining a mortgage.
Philp even put the Muslim Brotherhood question to El-Sayed directly: “Are you a front for the Muslim brotherhood to pervert American politics towards terrorism?” “No,” replied El-Sayed. And that, apparently, settled it.
El-Sayed went on to lose the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary to Gretchen Whitmer. But perhaps the media shouldn't have been so quick to dismiss questions about his background as the fever dreams of the far right.
Nearly a decade later, there's considerably more to examine: his endorsement of controversial decisions by Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohamed Morsi; his half-sister's revelations about their family's Muslim Brotherhood history; and his father-in-law, Tayeb Jukaku, who formerly headed CAIR Michigan and served on the founders' committee of the Islamic Society of North America. Both organizations were named as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas-financing case, although neither was charged.
And while El-Sayed has denied ever belonging to the Brotherhood, these documented connections deserve all the more scrutiny now that he has been elected to the United States Senate, where he will have a direct say in American foreign policy, national security legislation, and the confirmation of some of the country's most powerful officials.
Would more searching questions a decade ago have changed the course of his political career? We cannot know. What we do know is that journalists had an opportunity to examine his record and chose instead to portray the very act of questioning him as suspect.
How the Muslim Brotherhood Expanded Its Influence in the West
The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist movement founded in Egypt in 1928 by schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna. What began as a grassroots religious and social organization quickly developed into a political movement seeking to reshape society and government according to Islamic law.
Its ambitions spread beyond Egypt, forming branches and ideological offshoots throughout the Middle East and beyond. As a previous MidEastJournal investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood's transnational networks examined, the movement's influence extends through political movements, religious institutions, educational networks and social organizations.
Its history includes political assassinations, a paramilitary arm, and the extremist rhetoric of ideologue Sayyid Qutb, whose writings would go on to inspire generations of jihadists.
Hamas emerged from the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza in 1987, embracing terrorism to destroy Israel. Its founding charter explicitly invokes the killing of Jews, not merely the destruction of the Jewish state.
But political power through elections or the destruction of enemies through terror isn't the sole driver of the Brotherhood's international expansion. A vast network of charities, schools, mosques, educational institutions and political groups has enabled Brotherhood-associated organizations to take root internationally and exert influence outside the Middle East.
Throughout Europe, groups with historical or ideological affiliations with the Brotherhood have established themselves as representatives of Muslim communities, gaining access to politicians and public institutions while furthering their religious and political aims.
A 2015 British government investigation described the Brotherhood as “deliberately opaque” and “habitually secretive,” warning that elements of its ideology were incompatible with democracy, individual liberty and equality. It also identified Brotherhood-associated individuals in Britain who supported Hamas suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks against Israelis.
In France, a 2025 government investigation identified a network linked to the Brotherhood encompassing 139 affiliated places of worship, 21 schools and numerous associations, warning about its attempts to extend Islamist influence into French society.
And in October 2026, the European Parliament adopted a resolution condemning Islamist infiltration of democratic institutions and specifically identifying the Brotherhood as an example of a transnational network operating through educational, religious, charitable and social organizations.
Yet the Muslim Brotherhood remains unproscribed as a terrorist organization at the European Union level, despite mounting concerns about its activities and influence. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan have all banned the Brotherhood, citing extremism, threats to national security and political destabilization.
Terrorist financing by Brotherhood-associated figures has also been documented. In July 2026, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned a senior Egyptian Brotherhood official based in Britain and exposed charities used to funnel money to Hamas.
The Muslim Brotherhood is not merely a religious movement, as it portrays itself to be. It's a transnational Islamist movement with ambitions extending well beyond religious practice, seeking to transform society and government according to its interpretation of Islamic law. Its networks have established themselves within political, religious, educational and charitable institutions across continents, while elements of the movement have been implicated in financing terrorism.
This is the movement at the center of questions regarding Abdul El-Sayed's past statements, family history and organizational affiliations.
Abdul El-Sayed's Support for Egypt's Mohamed Morsi
The trail begins 15 years ago in Egypt, where Hosni Mubarak had ruled with an iron fist for nearly three decades. The Muslim Brotherhood had been officially banned since 1954, although its members continued to operate politically, including standing for parliament as independents. When mass protests erupted against Mubarak in January 2011, ultimately bringing down his regime the following month, the Brotherhood was poised to capitalize on the upheaval.
At the time, El-Sayed was a Rhodes Scholar pursuing a doctorate in public health at Oxford University while also studying medicine. And he was hardly shy about defending the prospect of the Brotherhood coming to power.
In January 2011, El-Sayed published a HuffPost essay urging the Obama administration to support Egypt's protesters and dismissing fears that the uprising could hand the country to the Brotherhood. Even if the Islamists seized power, he argued, Egypt would look nothing like Iran.
Less than two years later, the Brotherhood had its president. Mohamed Morsi, an Islamist with a long record of anti-Western and antisemitic rhetoric, who had questioned al-Qaeda's responsibility for 9/11 and described Jews and Zionists as “bloodsuckers” and “descendants of apes and pigs,” won Egypt's June 2012 presidential election. It took Morsi a matter of months to reveal his authoritarian ambitions.
On November 22, he effectively placed himself above the law, issuing a constitutional declaration shielding his presidential decisions from judicial review and provoking mass demonstrations. Three days later, El-Sayed was among those publicly backing him.
On November 25, El-Sayed joined 45 other Egyptian Americans in signing a statement published by Al-Ahram expressing support for Egypt's elected president and defending his controversial decisions. The statement also called for sweeping changes to Egypt's media and police institutions, raising troubling questions about its signatories' attitudes toward political dissent and institutional independence.
The statement was not a declaration of membership in the Muslim Brotherhood. But El-Sayed's willingness to defend Morsi at the very moment the Egyptian president was concentrating power beyond judicial oversight deserves examination, particularly given his subsequent political ambitions in the United States.
Family Ties, Muslim Student Organizations and CAIR
While El-Sayed was signing his name to statements backing Morsi, his own half-sister had already been publicly discussing their family's long-standing support for the Brotherhood in social media posts that would only be unearthed more than a decade later, during El-Sayed's 2026 Senate campaign.
In June 2012, Eman Abdelhadi, now a sociologist at the University of Chicago, wrote: “My family has long been MB, but I have always felt that it has navigated the political sphere poorly/destructively.”
In another post, she described a conversation with their biological mother, Fatten Elkomy, about her involvement in Muslim Brotherhood activism while attending college in Egypt during the early 1970s. Other posts referred to relatives in Egypt who supported the Brotherhood, including family members whom Abdelhadi said had been jailed for belonging to it.
When questioned about these statements, El-Sayed dismissed them as hearsay, arguing that he was not raised by his biological mother and had never discussed her political activities with her. But on October 29, a CBS News investigation revealed further troubling details about El-Sayed's mother: she had worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency, a charity shut down by U.S. authorities in 2004 over sanctions violations and support for terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda.
The FBI raided the charity's Missouri offices, and documents relating to financial transactions involving Elkomy were subsequently produced in court proceedings, although she was never charged with any crime or accused of wrongdoing in connection with the charity. While El-Sayed's campaign distanced him from his mother, a 2021 column he wrote described plans to visit her for Thanksgiving.
But the questions surrounding El-Sayed's Brotherhood connections don't simply end with his mother. His own history with organizations linked to the Brotherhood's American network is considerably harder to dismiss as family hearsay. Between 2003 and 2007, El-Sayed held leadership positions in the Muslim Students' Association (MSA) at the University of Michigan, serving as an outreach chair and later vice president.
The national MSA movement was established in 1963 with the involvement of Muslim Brotherhood members and sympathizers. Indeed, an internal Brotherhood memorandum from 1991, later introduced as evidence in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing prosecution, listed both MSA and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) among its organizations and those of its allies.
A six-part investigation published in October by the Investigative Project on Terrorism examined archived newsletters, meeting minutes, recordings and declassified FBI material. It documented El-Sayed's involvement in student recruitment and religious outreach at the Michigan chapter, as well as subsequent appearances at events organized by ISNA, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and ICNA-MAS.
These were not simply ordinary Muslim civic organizations with incidental ideological similarities to the Brotherhood. CAIR's founding leadership emerged from the Islamic Association for Palestine, an organization connected to the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee. Evidence introduced during the Holy Land Foundation prosecution documented the organizational network through which Brotherhood-associated activists established institutions in the United States.
American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), another organization whose political network would later support El-Sayed's candidacy, likewise has significant personnel and organizational links to the now-defunct Islamic Association for Palestine. Its historical roots place it within the broader network of organizations and activists associated with the Brotherhood's American infrastructure.
These historical relationships are important in understanding the institutions with which El-Sayed has associated, even though they do not independently establish his membership in the Brotherhood. At a 2018 CAIR banquet, El-Sayed publicly praised the organization. At events in 2020, he personally appealed for donations to support its work.
His father-in-law, physician Tayeb Jukaku, is a former president and current board member of CAIR Michigan who has also served on the Islamic Society of North America's (ISNA) founders' committee. Both CAIR and ISNA were named as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas-financing case, which resulted in convictions for funneling millions of dollars to the terrorist organization. Neither organization was itself charged in the case.
Jukaku is deeply invested in his son-in-law's political career, having reportedly contributed more than $300,000 in support of El-Sayed's Senate bid. Meanwhile, CAIR Action endorsed El-Sayed, while its associated super PAC, the Unity & Justice Fund, reportedly contributed $115,000 to a committee supporting his candidacy.
Nor was that the extent of the support. El-Sayed's candidacy also received public backing from Americans for Justice in Palestine, associated with American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), which is defending a civil lawsuit alleging connections to an earlier Hamas-financing network.
Taken together, these relationships raise questions extending well beyond the family history that El-Sayed has sought to distance himself from. They concern the organizations that helped shape his early activism, the groups whose platforms he has embraced, and the political networks that have supported his rise.
What El-Sayed's Senate Victory Means for the Scrutiny Ahead
When asked at an October 17 town hall whether he was willing to disavow the Muslim Brotherhood, El-Sayed replied, “Sure. Yeah, absolutely,” before challenging the premise of the question. He has also repeatedly denied belonging to the movement.
But his disavowal does not resolve the questions raised by his public support for Mohamed Morsi's controversial decisions, a half-sister who described longstanding Brotherhood involvement within their family, a mother reportedly involved in Brotherhood activism, years of participation in organizations with historical Brotherhood connections, and a father-in-law who held leadership positions in two such organizations while providing substantial financial support for his Senate campaign.
The Muslim Brotherhood has spent decades establishing footholds in religious, educational, charitable and political institutions, including in the United States. Now, a man with numerous past and current connections to organizations historically associated with that network has been elected to the United States Senate, where he will have a say in American foreign policy, counterterrorism legislation and national security oversight.
El-Sayed insists he has never belonged to the Brotherhood and has publicly disavowed it. But those denials do not erase the questions raised by his record. As he prepares to take office, scrutiny of his political judgment, alliances and influences is more important than ever.
His election should not put those questions to rest. It should make answering them all the more urgent.
Rachel O'Donoghue is Senior Writer at HonestReporting and its Content Strategy & Media Analysis Lead.