By It’s not going great for those Democrats in a typically blue state. In Michigan, Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has made accusations of anti-Muslim prejudice a prominent part of his campaign, claiming that he’s being attacked not because he downplayed a terror attack against a Detroit-area synagogue or because he campaigns with a guy who said America deserved the attacks of September 11.
It turns out it’s not the first time he’s blamed “Islamaphobia” for an inconvenient truth. In a 2012 essay for Mic, he falsely portrayed the murder of Iraqi immigrant Shaima Alawadi as an anti-Muslim attack, despite police warnings that the motive had not been established. Alawadi’s husband killed her and staged the scene to resemble a hate crime; a jury convicted him of murder in 2014.
Alawadi, a 32-year-old mother of five, was found beaten in her El Cajon, California, home, explained The Washington Free Beacon. A note left near her body read, “Go back to your country, you terrorist.” Writing days later under the name Abdulrahman El-Sayed, the future Senate nominee said Alawadi had been targeted for “the courage to wear a Hijab in a society where Muslims are openly vilified for the crimes of others.” His essay linked her death to Trayvon Martin’s shooting and blamed “racism, xenophobia, and hate.”
Investigators had not established that motive. The case instead led to Alawadi’s husband, Kassim Alhimidi, whom a jury convicted of her murder in 2014. Prosecutors said he planted the note to steer police toward a hate-crime theory. El-Sayed’s essay remains online without an apparent correction to its central claim.
That record is relevant as El-Sayed and his allies answer criticism of his campaign. He has accused Republicans of trying to use his full name against him, and some attacks on his religion have plainly gone beyond legitimate political argument. But voters can also judge his radical support for defunding the police, his alliance with Bernie Sanders, and his decision to campaign with streamer Hasan Piker without making El-Sayed’s faith the issue.
🚨The DSA and the progressive Democrat running for MI’s Senate seat Abdul El-Sayed are a toxic rebrand of socialism and communism.
Their real agenda: abolish ICE, amnesty for every illegal, open borders, public ownership of industry, defund and dismantle the police, scrap the… pic.twitter.com/IW1818vSqC
— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) August 4, 2026
Piker previously said America “deserved” the September 11 attacks. El-Sayed has since called that remark “dumb,” and it was Piker’s statement, not his. The question for El-Sayed is why he chose Piker as a campaign ally in the first place. Treating that question—or objections to his socialist policies—as Islamophobia would spare him from defending choices he made himself, noted The Wall Street Journal.
Abdul El-Sayed now says his campaign was never about Hasan Piker.
Yet he repeatedly embraced Piker on the campaign trail. Now he owns what comes with it.
Roll the tape. pic.twitter.com/DJ301lsUqE
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) August 29, 2026
A recent WDIV/Detroit News poll put Republican Mike Rogers at 45.8 percent and El-Sayed at 44.4 percent, a statistical tie. It cannot tell us why any particular voter favors one candidate. El-Sayed’s old essay does show what can happen when a politically useful explanation hardens into certainty before the evidence is in.
[READ MORE: Congressman Crashes In Lake, Swims For His Life]
