Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed disputed questions about alleged family connections to the Muslim Brotherhood during an interview on NBC’s “Nightly News” with anchor Tom Llamas. The exchange followed scrutiny of El-Sayed’s earlier denial that he or his family had ties to the group.
Llamas cited social media posts by El-Sayed’s half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, which said their mother had been involved with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1970s. Asked to explain the posts, El-Sayed pointed to his upbringing and career in Michigan, questioning why he was being asked about events in Egypt decades earlier.
Llamas replied that El-Sayed had been asked about the subject before and had given an answer. El-Sayed reiterated that he had no ties to the organization and said he had not discussed his mother’s alleged activity with her. He characterized the posts as hearsay. When Llamas asked whether El-Sayed expected honesty from others after criticizing President Donald Trump’s truthfulness, El-Sayed asked if the anchor was suggesting he had lied. Llamas said he was asking rather than making that claim; El-Sayed denied lying.
The dispute follows a Sunday appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where Kristen Welker asked El-Sayed to clarify whether he and his family had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. He answered “No” and suggested that his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, was promoting Islamophobic attacks against him and his family.
Abdelhadi’s posts, cited in the supplied reporting and attributed there to earlier posts on X, make claims about their mother, Fatten Elkomy. In a 2012 post, Abdelhadi described a conversation with their mother about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood while she was a college student in the early 1970s. In another post that year, she wrote that her family had long been associated with the organization and criticized how it had operated politically. A 2013 post referred to family members who supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
The claims in those posts are allegations and do not, by themselves, establish the extent or nature of their mother’s involvement. The supplied material also notes that Elkomy attended Alexandria University and cites a Brookings Institution report describing strong Muslim Brotherhood activity at the university during the 1970s. That background does not independently establish the allegations about Elkomy.
An El-Sayed campaign spokesperson previously told Fox News that El-Sayed is a father and doctor whose career has focused on public health in Michigan. The spokesperson said independent fact-checkers had debunked claims by Rogers’ campaign and described the attacks on El-Sayed’s faith and family as bad faith. The campaign has also called the Muslim Brotherhood accusations racist and untrue. The supplied material does not provide the names or findings of the referenced fact-checkers.
Fox News said it sought additional comment from the El-Sayed campaign. No response to that request is included in the supplied material.
