Michigan US Senate: Who is Abdul El-Sayed, dubbed as 'jihadi' by Trump?
Trump has called him a “jihadi” and mocked his name, but the Michigan Democrat says he is running for the people of his state, not for any lobby
In April 2007, Abdul El-Sayed delivered the student valedictorian speech at the University of Michigan, where former US President Bill Clinton was the main commencement speaker. He recalls that afterwards, Clinton walked up to him and said, “Son, why are you going to medical school?” Clinton noted that he was a fine speaker and should enter public service. El-Sayed, popularly known by his first name Abdul, replied that he was brown and a Muslim, and besides, no one with a name like his could be in politics. “People like me don’t get to run for office,” he said. Clinton chuckled and walked away.
The young man was flattered but did not give much thought to Clinton’s advice. Yet the following year, in 2008, when he watched candidate Barack Hussein Obama speak, he was blown away. Not just by the fine rhetoric, but by the fact that a man with a name like Barack Hussein Obama could run for president. That got him thinking.
Running for US Senate
Yet nothing happened for a long time. Instead, he concentrated on his education. As a Rhodes scholar, he went to Oxford University and earned his medical degree from Columbia University. But he did not pursue a career as a practising doctor, concentrating instead on public health issues.
Also read: Vivek Ramaswamy: The ambitious Indian-American eyeing Ohio’s governorship
In 2015, El-Sayed was appointed executive director of the Detroit Health Department but resigned in 2017, at the age of 32, to launch a campaign for governor. That proved unsuccessful. Yet here he is now in a Democratic race for the US Senate. President Barack Obama campaigned for him. So did Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. El-Sayed belongs to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
El-Sayed says he is running for the Senate, “because life in Michigan shouldn’t be this hard-or this expensive.” He adds on his website: “After a successful career of making government work for Michiganders, he wants to take his vision to Washington and make the US Senate work for you.”
Abdul’s condemnation of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu, calling out the genocide in Gaza and his attack on the powerful Israeli lobby that funds American politics have riled the opposition.
Trump dubs Al-Sayed as 'jihadi'
US President Donald Trump has dubbed him a “jihadi” several times while campaigning for Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate for the Michigan Senate seat. Rogers is a staunch defender of Israel and has been liberally funded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) or the Jewish lobby. Rogers accuses El-Sayed of caring more for the suffering of Palestinians than for the people of Michigan.
El-Sayed, who was pulling ahead of Rogers in opinion polls, got a jolt when Democrat Haley Stevens, whom he had defeated in the primaries, decided at the last moment to switch sides and endorse Rogers. Whether this was because of personal pique, since she made the decision after being uninvited to a joint event with El-Sayed, is hard to tell. But her dramatic announcement on Sunday with Rogers beside her sent shock waves through the Democratic establishment.
El-Sayed's fitting reply to Trump
Stevens, like many Democrats, is a supporter of Israel and is not given to questioning Netanyahu’s military action following the Hamas attack of October 7.
At a time when Islamophobia has overtaken the US and the world at large, the candidate's religion has become a talking point of the Michigan race. Trump often mocked El-Sayed’s name and deliberately mispronounced it referring to him often as Muhammad. To which El-Sayed gave a fitting reply by reminding Trump that he never mispronounced the name of the Arab leaders like Mohammed Bin Salman, the super-rich Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, who is alleged to have invested two billion dollars in a private equity fund of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. Nor did Trump mistake the names of the Qatari royal family while accepting a luxury jet from the Qatari government.
El-Sayed’s success could give a fillip to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and perhaps force the old guard to embrace a more radical shift in its politics.
