Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed courted voters inside at least five Islamic centers that have a history of ultraviolent rhetoric that include branding the United States “the House of Satan” and calling for “the final annihilation of Jews,” The Post has learned.
El-Sayed visited the Islamic Center of Detroit in March 2026 to shore up support, addressing the packed room of men during a Ramadan prayer gathering and soliciting signatures to qualify for the Michigan Democratic primary.
“I have to get on the ballot to be able to get your vote, inshallah. So, my team is here in the back … we need your signature to get on the ballot,” El-Sayed told the congregation, after he was welcomed to the pulpit by a mosque leader who introduced him as “our beloved brother Dr. Abdulrahman.”
“Please don’t leave here without doing that,” he urged, according to a video on the center’s YouTube channel reviewed by The Post.
During the same service, a leader read a closing prayer in Arabic, which called for Allah to take the “worst revenge” upon Zionists.
“The Zionists have spread corruption in the land. Your forbearance has deceived them, so show them your power … They killed our brothers and sisters, so take the worst revenge upon them,” the leader sang, according to the footage.
“Raise no banner for them in the lands of the Muslims … foil their plans in every time and place,” he continued.”
Last year, an Islamic scholar told the congregation that as Muslims they were “living here in America, in the house of Satan,” before making a wild claim that the US Constitution was based on Islam.
“I’m expecting some rough time during the next four years, so it is important for us to be able and ready to say no, this is not a Christian country, this was not built by the Judeo-Christian tradition,” proclaimed Dr. Zulfiqar Shah in January 2025 in a taped service.
“It was built upon the Islamic ideology.”
And in March 2024, a religious leader called for the killing of all “Zionist aggressors.”
“Count them one by one and kill them all, scattering them, and leave not one of them,” he said, according to the videos translated by the Middle East Forum.
El-Sayed, 41, has spoken at several events at the Islamic Center of Detroit through the years, going as far back as 2017 and including a political meeting at the mosque in 2019, according to news reports.
It’s not the only tax-exempt Islamic center where he campaigned that has a history of hateful speech.
El Sayed also spoke at the Islamic Organization of North America in Warren, which has hosted speakers who have called for “the final annihilation of Jews.”
The Senate hopeful visited in September, when his campaign operated a booth soliciting donations and volunteers, while circulating campaign flyers.
“They will be exterminated. … And actually, this greater Israel would become their greater graveyard. And it has been established to drag all the Israelis from all the corners of the world to their graveyard. And here they will perish,” said a speaker in 2013.
At the American Moslem Society in Dearborn — one of the Detroit area’s largest and oldest mosques, where El-Sayed campaigned last week — leaders have prayed to “let us live upon jihad and cause us to die upon martyrdom.”
While there, El-Sayed cited faith and moral obligation to rally support, while criticizing US support for Israel.
“We deserve to know that our money isn’t being wasted to make war, to do genocide, to backstop apartheid,” he told the crowded room.
El-Sayed also spoke at the Islamic Institute of America — which prayed for Allah to “show vengeance and wrath against the criminal Zionists” — and the Islamic House of Wisdom — which called for “disbelievers to be neutralized if not destroyed” — both in Dearborn Heights in June.
“El-Sayed is a terrorist sympathizer who has taken every opportunity to excuse Islamic extremism and platform radical imams, Muslim Brotherhood-linked networks, and people who said America deserved 9/11,” slammed Natalie Baldassarre, National Press Secretary for the Republican National Committee.
“He’s a better fit for Guantanamo Bay than the halls of Congress, and Michiganders should keep this jihadist as far away from power as possible.”
Meanwhile two other centers that have a history of violent speech — the Muslim Educational Community Center of America in Canton and the American Muslim Diversity Association in Sterling Heights — urged worshippers to send El-Sayed to the Senate.
“It’s mandatory to go and to elect brother Abdul El-Sayed because at least we know he’s a Muslim,” Saleh Qazwini, imam for the former, said. “We have to all come out in numbers.”
El-Sayed’s family ties and own associations with designated terror and extremist groups have dogged his campaign.
His father, Mohammed El-Sayed, sits on the board of Life for Relief and Development, an Islamic charity accused of funneling money to Hamas and Saddam Hussein.
His mother, Fatten Elkomy, worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency, a group accused of funding bin Laden, Hamas and Taliban, and was an activist with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that seeks to establish Sharia law.
And El-Sayed himself penned a 2012 letter in support of the Brotherhood, a designated a terrorist organization by the State Department.
He’s denied his ties and did not return The Post’s request for comment.
