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Republicans nearly immediately resorted to Islamophobic attacks after voters chose Abdul El-Sayed as Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Senate candidate on Wednesday, sparking defiance from El-Sayed as he taunted the GOP’s inability to speak to real issues.
In a statement on El-Sayed’s win on Wednesday morning, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) referred to El-Sayed using his full name — a move that hearkens to Republicans’ anti-Muslim references to Barack Obama using his middle name, Hussein.
The statement refers to El-Sayed as Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed and attempts to smear him as a “radical.” The press release links to the NRSC’s new ad against the Democratic candidate in which a voiceover also uses his full name.
The ad further goes on to repeat a baseless conspiracy theory that El-Sayed is supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood, and flashes excerpts of an op-ed he wrote in 2011 where he does not express any such opinion.
El-Sayed’s opponent, Mike Rogers, also referenced such debunked claims in a bigoted statement on the primary results. Rogers’s statement was even more overt in its Islamophobia, making claims about El-Sayed that are demonstrably untrue and even throwing in a seemingly violent threat.
“I spent years hunting terrorists and bringing Osama bin Laden to justice,” said Rogers, potentially referring to his time as chair of the House Intelligence Committee in the 2010s. “Never in a million years did I think that I would be running against someone who believes America deserved 9/11.”
Rogers seems to be implying that El-Sayed has said that U.S. “deserved” the 9/11 attack, something that allied streamer Hasan Piker once said and swiftly apologized for, years ago. Piker has been a high-profile supporter of El-Sayed, but El-Sayed has never expressed a similar sentiment.
Still, Rogers’s and the Republicans’ immediate turn to Islamophobia is an early show of what strategies they may use in the next three months of campaigning.
Speaking of the importance of unity among Democrats, El-Sayed stood in defiance of the Republican attacks, addressing them head on.
“They want to use my whole name against me,” El-Sayed said. “Mike, listen, man. If you can’t say the name, it’s Abdulrahman, keep the name out your damn mouth.”
He pledged to stand by the Jewish community in the state in pushback against other Islamophobic attacks that he faced during the primary that tried to smear him as antisemitic.
Later, El-Sayed also responded to a question from a reporter about his plan to combat Islamophobic attacks in the upcoming race.
“That’s the only play they got,” he said. “They’re going to point at me, they’re going to point at my name, like ‘wow, he’s different.’ That’s the best you got? You can’t actually talk about what you want to do? My name is not raising your gas prices. My name is not taking us to war. My name is not the reason you can’t afford your groceries.”
“I’ve been an Abdul in Michigan my whole life. This is the best place in the world to be an Abdul,” El-Sayed went on. “Because Michiganders are — they’re big-hearted, they’re open-minded, they’re earnest, and they’re gritty. And Michiganders are sick and tired of B.S. politics coming in to divide us.”
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