On October 5, Abdul El-Sayed's campaign held a $3,500-a-head fundraiser in Manhattan. One of the hosts was Dr. Debbie Almontaser, the former principal of New York City's Khalil Gibran International Academy — the first public school in the city devoted to the study of Arabic language and culture. Almontaser resigned the position in 2007 after publicly defending the use of the word "intifada" as an appropriate slogan to print on a t-shirt.
That was the moderate fundraiser.
On July 11, El-Sayed attended a separate fundraiser in Chesterfield, Michigan, hosted by Huwaida Araf — co-founder of the Free Gaza movement, which launched multiple sea voyages to challenge what Araf describes as Israel's "illegal blockade." Araf has also described Thanksgiving as a "national day of mourning." The Washington Free Beacon reported both events. Politico covered the October Manhattan fundraiser but somehow omitted any mention of Almontaser's history.
These aren't opposition research deep cuts. Almontaser's resignation made national news. Araf's flotilla activism is a matter of public record. El-Sayed's campaign stood next to both of them and cashed the checks.
And they're not even the most damaging names in his orbit. El-Sayed's half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi — a professor at the University of Chicago — posted on social media in 2012 that she'd "had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s." A separate post from the same year was more succinct: "Family has long been MB."
When NBC News anchor Tom Llamas pressed El-Sayed directly on whether he or his family has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, El-Sayed said "No." His half-sister's social media posts say otherwise. The Muslim Brotherhood is designated a terrorist organization by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain.
Then there's the money pipeline. El-Sayed's father-in-law, Jukaku Tayeb, sits on the founding committee of the Islamic Society of North America — named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terror financing case — and has donated $200,000 to El-Sayed's campaign. CAIR officials have contributed six figures more. CAIR was also named in the Holy Land Foundation case. The UAE designated CAIR a terrorist organization in 2014.
El-Sayed's mother, Fatten Elkomy, worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency, which the Treasury Department designated a terrorist organization in 2004.
The Democratic Michigan Senate candidate's response to all of this has been to call the allegations politically motivated and invoke dual-loyalty smears. That framing requires ignoring the fundraiser guest lists, the family social media posts, the financial disclosures, and the federal designations — all of which are public record.
Meanwhile, El-Sayed's coalition is cracking from the other side. A Fox News poll from late September showed only 77 percent of African American voters supporting him — well below the benchmarks Democrats need in Michigan. In Detroit, the skepticism is personal. An undecided Black voter named Mercedes told Fox News Digital that Obama's endorsement of El-Sayed is "honestly a turn-off just because I've seen too many candidates use him just to manipulate the Democratic vote." Another voter, Juanita, said flatly: "I don't want to be pushed to vote for him because somebody else is backing him."
El-Sayed won his primary by a single percentage point. He lost Detroit by 28 points.
The pattern isn't complicated. A candidate whose half-sister described the family as "long MB" on social media, whose father-in-law helped found an unindicted co-conspirator organization, whose mother worked for a Treasury-designated terrorist entity, and who fundraises with an intifada apologist and a flotilla organizer — that candidate now needs Black voters in Detroit who already feel taken for granted to show up for him anyway.
El-Sayed lost Detroit by 28 points in a primary where the only voters were Democrats.
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