WASHINGTON — Democratic Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed bristled Wednesday when questioned during a network news segment about whether he lied when he claimed his family didn’t have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
During a Sunday appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” El-Sayed emphatically said “no” when pressed about the Brotherhood, which has been linked to terror organizations like Hamas.
Following the interview, El-Sayed’s Republican foe Mike Rogers cited 2012 tweets by the Democrat’s half-sister, University of Chicago Professor Eman Abdelhadi, who claimed their mother was a Brotherhood activist while a student in Egypt.
“Are you serious?” El-Sayed responded when “NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Llamas pressed him on the matter. “I have no ties. We have no ties.”
“I have never had these conversations with my mother. I wasn’t raised by my mother,” he added. “You’re using hearsay evidence from a tweet. It’s not serious. It’s just not serious.”
After Llamas noted that El-Sayed has zinged President Trump for not being truthful, the visibly agitated candidate fired back: “Are you insinuating that somehow I was lying? I’m telling you I was not.”
The Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, began as a religious and social organization before entering the political arena following World War II and the founding of Israel — gaining support and influence following Israel’s defeat of Arab nations in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Hamas was established in 1987 from Brotherhood-affiliated charities and other social institutions in the Gaza Strip. The Brotherhood’s leaders insist it renounced violence decades ago and seeks to set up Islamic rule through elections and other peaceful means.
The Muslim Brotherhood has been designated a terrorist organization by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia — though not the US.
“Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college #respect,” Abdelhadi posted on X June 24, 2012, as first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
“My family has long been MB, but I’ve always felt that it has navigated the political sphere poorly/destructively,” she later wrote that same day.
El-Sayed was listed as Abdelhadi’s guardian at the time of her marriage, which was conducted in 2016 in accordance with Islamic Sharia law, according to the Free Beacon. The outlet also reported that El-Sayed’s father-in-law, Tayeb Jukaku, served on the committee of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which also has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood
Additionally, El-Sayed’s birth mother, Fatten El-Komy, once worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency, which the Treasury Department designated as a terrorist organization in 2004 for supporting Al Qaeda and Hamas.
El-Komy was never implicated as a co-conspirator or charged with a crime.
El-Sayed’s parents divorced when he was young, and he was raised by his father and stepmother.
