During a Saturday interview on MS NOW, Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed invoked John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign as he responded to questions about relatives’ alleged connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed argued that such questions were intended to suggest he might have divided loyalties to the United States.
He recalled that Kennedy faced questions about whether his allegiance would be to the U.S. Constitution or to the pope and the Vatican. El-Sayed said the Constitution protects people’s freedom to practice a religion or not to practice one, and argued that his support for religious freedom and other rights made suggestions of dual loyalty unreasonable. The interview was conducted by Ali Velshi.
Ted Goodman, communications director for the Michigan Republican Party, rejected El-Sayed’s comparison in a statement to Fox News Digital. Goodman said questions about the candidate’s relatives were not equivalent to the religious scrutiny Kennedy faced. He also asserted that reporting about the family involved factual information, rather than assumptions based only on El-Sayed’s faith. Those assertions were presented by Goodman; the supplied account does not independently establish them.
Velshi asked El-Sayed about questions involving the Muslim Brotherhood, terrorism and radical Islamism. El-Sayed responded that the purpose of the questions was to insinuate that he had competing loyalties. The dispute follows social media posts attributed to El-Sayed’s half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, and reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
In one post from 2012, Abdelhadi described discussing with her mother, Fatten Elkomy, the mother’s activism in the Muslim Brotherhood while attending college in Egypt in the early 1970s. In another post, Abdelhadi wrote that the family had a longstanding connection to the organization and criticized how it had operated in politics. The posts are statements attributed to the half-sister; they do not, by themselves, establish that El-Sayed belonged to the organization.
El-Sayed denied personal connections to the Muslim Brotherhood in an Oct. 11 appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press. In a later exchange with NBC’s Tom Llamas, he was asked about his half-sister’s statements and whether he had discussed the allegations with his mother. El-Sayed said he had not had those conversations and said he was not raised by his mother. The supplied report does not describe further details of that exchange.
Goodman also referred to El-Sayed’s father-in-law, Tayeb Jukaku. The report says the Washington Free Beacon documented Jukaku’s involvement with the Islamic Society of North America and a Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and reported that he donated $200,000 to a super PAC supporting El-Sayed. It also says the organization was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing case. These details concern Jukaku and the organizations cited, and do not establish personal membership or wrongdoing by El-Sayed.
The source further reports that the Treasury Department designated the Egyptian and Jordanian branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as Specially Designated Global Terrorists in January, saying they provided material support to Hamas. The report does not state that El-Sayed was implicated in that action.
El-Sayed’s campaign previously rejected accusations about the candidate’s family, saying Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers was using the issue to attack El-Sayed’s faith. The campaign also said fact-checkers had debunked Rogers’ claims, though the supplied material does not provide details of those reviews. Fox News Digital said it sought comment from El-Sayed and Rogers but had not received responses at the time of publication.
