By What line aren’t Democrats willing to cross?
That question is becoming increasingly difficult to answer as the party rallies behind Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, despite a growing list of controversial allies and associations.
Now El-Sayed is scheduled to appear at one of the country’s largest Islamic gatherings alongside a Pakistani cleric who has reportedly acknowledged forcing his 13-year-old niece into marriage and has delivered sermons denouncing Jews, according to a stunning story by The Washington Free Beacon.
El-Sayed will speak at the Islamic Society of North America’s 63rd annual convention in Detroit over Labor Day weekend. According to the convention schedule, he will appear Sept. 5 on a panel titled “Cultivating God Awareness in a Turmoiled America.”
Among the other speakers is Pakistani mufti Tariq Masood.
Masood is scheduled to participate in a panel on “avoiding mental illness in youth,” including a discussion of how parents “can prevent or minimize the impact of any trauma leading to a mental illness.”
That is an extraordinary assignment considering Masood’s own record.
Pakistani media outlets reported that Masood acknowledged during a 2021 sermon that he forced his 13-year-old niece into marriage and encouraged his followers to arrange similar marriages for young female relatives.
Masood has also asserted that under Sharia law, a husband gets to decide whether his wife can pursue higher education or must remain a housewife.
Canadian activists sought to keep Masood out of their country in 2024, urging the government to deny him a visa because of what they called his “pedophilic rhetoric.”
Then there are his comments about Jews.
In a 2024 sermon titled “The Final Humiliation of the Jews,” Masood reportedly claimed Jews’ “cunning minds” had sought to control the world.
“The Quran condemns Jews,” Masood said, while adding that “not all Jews are the same.”
He further claimed that the level of “evil and turmoil” among Jews exceeded that of any other group.
Masood is scheduled to moderate another convention panel featuring ISNA President Syed Imtiaz Ahmad. Ahmad, in turn, is scheduled to sit on the same panel as El-Sayed.
And Masood is hardly the convention’s only controversial figure.
New York imam Siraj Wahhaj, who was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case, is on the program.
Texas imam Yasir Qadhi is scheduled for several panels. Qadhi has previously described the Holocaust as a “hoax” and claimed Adolf Hitler “never intended to mass-destroy the Jews.”
Hussam Ayloush of the Council on American-Islamic Relations is scheduled to discuss civic participation. Following the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, Ayloush said that “Israel should be attacked” and that if “you want to pick up arms and defend your people and your land, that is a legitimate right.”
Former Pakistani President Arif Alvi is also scheduled to attend. Alvi faced criticism in 2018 after declining to revise Pakistan’s blasphemy laws following death sentences handed to two Christian brothers accused of insulting the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
El-Sayed’s panel will also include Cenk Uygur, uncle of far-left streamer Hasan Piker.
Piker has become another political problem for El-Sayed after previously saying that “America deserved 9/11.” El-Sayed has faced pressure from Democrats, including Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, over his relationship with Piker but has declined to fully distance himself from the streamer.
The situation raises a familiar question for Democrats: At what point does a candidate’s collection of radical allies and associations become disqualifying?
It is a question the party recently confronted with disastrous results in Maine.
As New Conservative Post previously reported in its article on the Democrats’ growing “predator problem,” party leaders continued embracing Graham Platner even as controversy after controversy accumulated around the progressive Senate candidate. Platner had faced scrutiny over offensive online posts, sexually explicit communications while married and a tattoo resembling a symbol used by the Nazi SS before an ex-girlfriend eventually accused him of rape. Platner denied the allegation and ultimately withdrew from the race.
The warning signs had been visible much earlier. NCP previously reported on mounting allegations against Platner while prominent Democrats were still treating him as a rising progressive star.
El-Sayed now presents Democrats with another test.
He has himself attacked President Trump and Republicans as “pedophile protectors” over the handling of Jeffrey Epstein-related files.
Yet over Labor Day weekend, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan is scheduled to participate in a convention featuring a cleric accused by critics of “pedophilic rhetoric” after reportedly acknowledging forcing a 13-year-old girl into marriage.
The irony does not end there.
During a March campaign strategy call, El-Sayed reportedly told aides that if questioned about the assassination of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, he would pivot to attacking the “pedophile president” rather than risk alienating Muslim voters.
Some moderate and Jewish Democrats have already said they will not support El-Sayed over his associations with anti-Israel figures. Fetterman has publicly compared the political problems surrounding El-Sayed to those that engulfed Platner.
El-Sayed’s connections to ISNA are also personal.
His father-in-law, Tayeb Jukaku, has served on ISNA’s founding committee since 2007 and donated $300,000 to a political action committee supporting El-Sayed. ISNA has historical ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing case.
El-Sayed has also previously described an “obligation” to follow Sharia in connection with an Islamic mortgage from University Bank, which structures financing without conventional interest.
The institution, now known as University Islamic Financial, is sponsoring the ISNA convention.
So is Amana Funds, a Sharia-compliant investment firm in which El-Sayed has reported holdings valued between $150,000 and $425,000.
None of that means El-Sayed endorses every statement made by every other speaker at a sprawling convention.
But Democrats have spent years insisting that associations matter, rhetoric matters and character matters.
Platner tested just how many warning signs the party was willing to overlook before the political cost finally became unbearable.
With El-Sayed, Democrats may soon have to tell voters where the line actually is—assuming there is one.
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