From a 2021 "Palestine Freedom Rally" to a 2026 lake-house fundraiser, the people closest to El-Sayed's political career include an activist who wrote that Palestinians "have a right to resist with arms," a CAIR leader who preached about "the Jews," and a streamer who said America "deserved 9/11."
The weekend after he launched his campaign for the U.S. Senate on April 17, 2025, Abdul El-Sayed was scheduled to give the keynote address at a conference for Muslim teenagers in metro Detroit. The Michigan Muslim Youth Council called its 2025 gathering "The War Within: Preserving Islamic Identity." Its posted sponsors include Islamic Relief USA, a charity whose affiliate, Islamic Relief Worldwide, Israel banned from the West Bank in 2014, saying it funneled money to Hamas, and which the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has twice referred to the IRS, in 2024 and 2025, writing that it was "suspected of having terrorist ties to groups like Hamas." (In March 2026, Islamic Relief USA sued in federal court to sever its affiliation with the British-based parent, citing the congressional referrals.)
El-Sayed's ties to the youth council run back nearly two decades. In 2008, the Association of American Rhodes Scholars' announcement of his selection described him as a former "vice president of the Michigan Muslim Students' Association and Head Counselor of the Michigan Muslim Youth council." In March 2017, as a new candidate for governor, he recorded a promotional video for the council's conference: "Alright guys, so here's why I need you to come to MMYC. It's going to be fun, you're going to learn a lot, you're going to meet your best friends, and you're going to have a great time." The council's Instagram post billed him as "candidate for Governor of Michigan and a former MMYC head counselor."
The 2017 conference program listed him alongside Dawud Walid, the executive director of CAIR's Michigan chapter, the same man the University of Michigan MSA newsletter had called the "mentor" of a youth group it promoted during El-Sayed's senior year. Walid's record was already public. In a May 2012 sermon at a mosque in Warren, he asked his congregation: "Who are those who incurred the wrath of Allah?" He answered in Arabic: "They are the Jews, they are the Jews." In the same sermon he said that "if you trace the organizations and the main advocates and activists of Islamophobia in America, you will see that all those organizations are pro-Israeli occupation organizations... every single last one." In 2016 he told a conference of American Muslims for Palestine that the "militarized police forces that shoot unarmed black people" were trained "in Israel."
"Who are those who incurred the wrath of Allah?... They are the Jews, they are the Jews."
- CAIR-Michigan Executive Director Dawud Walid, sermon in Warren, Mich., May 25, 2012
In June 2018, defending El-Sayed against a Republican rival who had tied him to the Brotherhood, Walid told his congregation about "one of the brothers — one of our brothers — who's running for governor."
The Warren rally
The Warren mosque where Walid gave that sermon is led by Imam Mustapha Elturk. In May 2021, a Detroit News photographer captured El-Sayed and Elturk in conversation outside Warren City Hall, at a "Palestine Freedom Rally" held three days after a ceasefire ended an 11-day war that began when Hamas fired rockets at Jerusalem.
The rally's flyer listed among its sponsors New Generation for Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace Detroit and the Michigan Democratic Party's Progressive Caucus; Wayne State University's Students for Justice in Palestine helped organize it. Crowd estimates ranged from a few hundred to about a thousand. El-Sayed was a featured speaker. "We always are grateful for a ceasing of violence but a cease-fire is not the same thing as peace because peace is founded in justice," he said, according to The Detroit News. "We don't want our tax dollars spent on a foreign military fund in occupation of foreign rights," he said, according to The Macomb Daily. And, according to The Arab American News, the Dearborn weekly published by Osama Siblani, he criticized U.S. support for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen and addressed the Jews in the crowd: "I want to say, in particular, to my Jewish sisters and brothers who are here today in solidarity for justice, thank you. Because we know that you are sick and tired of watching your beautiful faith, your beautiful culture, used to justify state sponsored oppression of another people."
"You are sick and tired of watching your beautiful faith, your beautiful culture, used to justify state sponsored oppression of another people."
- El-Sayed to Jewish attendees at the Warren "Palestine Freedom Rally," May 23, 2021, as reported by The Arab American News
None of his reported remarks mentioned Hamas or its rockets. Other speakers went further. Huwaida Arraf told The Arab American News at the rally that the United States is "a critical pillar of Israel's brutal repression of the Palestinians," and told the crowd, according to The Macomb Daily, that there was "no end to the forced displacement, the ethnic cleansing." Amer Zahr, the Dearborn comedian, accused "the Israeli army" of "murdering and massacring families in Gaza." Signs read "Defund Police, defund Israel!" After the speeches, according to a photo agency caption, the crowd marched down Van Dyke Avenue "chanting slogans like 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!'"
Five years later, at least one of the rally's organizers still regards it as a credential. On August 6, 2026, two days after El-Sayed won the Democratic primary, Delwar Ansar, a Warren planning commissioner who called himself one of the rally's "hosts and organizer," posted a photograph from it to a pro-El-Sayed Facebook group. "At that time, speaking out against Israel was widely seen as politically risky," he wrote. "Among them were familiar and respected figures such as El-Sayed... I respectfully encourage you to support El-Sayed."
The flotilla organizer in his corner
Of the Warren speakers, the one who has stayed closest to El-Sayed is Huwaida Arraf.
Arraf co-founded the International Solidarity Movement in 2001, at the height of the Second Intifada. In 2002, as suicide bombers struck Israeli buses and cafés, she and her husband, Adam Shapiro, wrote an essay that declared: "We accept that Palestinians have a right to resist with arms." "The Palestinian resistance must take on a variety of characteristics — both nonviolent and violent," they wrote, and they told would-be Hamas suicide bombers that blocking settler roads would be "no less of a jihad... no less noble than carrying out a suicide operation." In a 2006 letter to the Washington Post, Arraf confirmed she had "acknowledged" that the group "cooperates with Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine," all U.S.-designated terrorist organizations, insisting she meant cooperation in "nonviolent resistance." She went on to chair the Free Gaza Movement and sits on the steering committee of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. In 2020 she called the PFLP airline hijacker Leila Khaled a "Palestinian freedom fighter." She is also a member of the Michigan Democratic Party's State Central Committee.
"We accept that Palestinians have a right to resist with arms."
- Huwaida Arraf and Adam Shapiro, 2002
Arraf holds no formal role in El-Sayed's campaign. But in March 2025 she promoted a health-care town hall with him as "special guest." The day he launched his Senate campaign in April 2025, she cheered: "YAAASSS! Finally—Michigan has a chance to elect a Senator who isn't bought and paid for by big money." In March 2026 she helped launch "Women For Abdul," praising his commitment to "ending support for Israeli genocide and apartheid." On July 11, 2026, she was one of four hosts of a lake-house brunch fundraiser for him in Chesterfield Township; Federal Election Commission records show she gave his campaign $400 that day. "Three generations of Palestinian women for Abdul!" she posted afterward.
"A hundred times on the broadcast"
No figure in El-Sayed's orbit has drawn more national attention than Hasan Piker, the Twitch streamer who said in 2019 that "America deserved 9/11," later saying he did not mean it literally. Piker has called the October 7 massacre a "direct consequence" of Israeli and American policy, and in a 2024 stream said it "doesn't matter" whether women were sexually assaulted that day, because it would not change his view of the conflict. At an April 2026 campus rally with El-Sayed, Piker told students to "remind yourself of the worst fascist that you know. It could be Donald Trump, it could be Rabbi Shmuley."
El-Sayed has appeared with Piker again and again: a 93-minute in-studio interview in July 2025; an afternoon in Dearborn that August, the same day Piker opened his speech at a Palestine conference with a chant of "from the river to the sea"; a Los Angeles studio session in January 2026; joint rallies at Michigan State and the University of Michigan in April; a stream from El-Sayed's campaign headquarters in July; and his primary-night party in August. "I've already had the guy on like a hundred times on the broadcast," Piker told Semafor. "I've fundraised for him."
When critics demanded he cancel the April rallies, El-Sayed refused. "I agree with a lot of what Hasan Piker says about the war in Iran, the nature of the way that AIPAC has decimated our politics," he said. "When did we start bending to cancel culture?" he asked on Fox & Friends. In August 2026, after Piker made remarks suggesting pro-Israel advocacy could make American Jews targets, El-Sayed's campaign said that "nobody speaks for this campaign besides me and my campaign spokespeople." He has never formally disavowed Piker himself. On September 18, he told MS NOW's Morning Joe: "He wasn't a big part of my campaign. We had him to Michigan once."
"He wasn't a big part of my campaign. We had him to Michigan once." (El-Sayed, Sept. 18, 2026) / "I've already had the guy on like a hundred times."
- Piker, to Semafor
Dearborn, September 2026
On a September evening this year, El-Sayed headlined a campaign fundraiser at the Bint Jebail Cultural Center in Dearborn, the same hall where CAIR-Michigan had held its 2005 banquet promoted by the University of Michigan MSA. The Arab American News, Siblani's paper, which reported that the event raised about $350,000, quoted his promise: "In November, we will teach them how to say my name correctly." He thanked by name the newspaper's publisher, Osama Siblani, whom the Washington Free Beacon reported has called Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah a "hero" and Hamas and Hezbollah "freedom fighters." Also on the program, according to the Free Beacon, was Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi, who eulogized Iran's late supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Amer Zahr, who called Nasrallah a "martyr," was in the crowd.
The Free Beacon has also reported that Mohamed Soltan, the "friend" El-Sayed championed in his newsletter, gave the maximum contribution to his campaign and that Soltan's nonprofit gave $25,000 to a PAC supporting him, and that El-Sayed's campaign received $500 from Abdul Mawgoud Dardery, a former foreign affairs spokesman for the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt.
"Doesn't mean you agree with them on everything"
El-Sayed has a standard answer when asked about the people around him. "Just because you appear with somebody, doesn't mean you agree with them on everything," he told Fox in April. He is right that association is not agreement, and nothing in this series suggests he has said the things Walid, Arraf or Piker have said.
But the question is not one appearance. It is a pattern that runs for two decades, from the MSA board table to the CAIR banquet stage to the Warren rally to a 2026 fundraiser hosted by a woman who wrote that Palestinians "have a right to resist with arms." It is hard to imagine a Senate candidate sharing a youth-conference bill with a preacher who taught that Muslims had "incurred the wrath" of God. El-Sayed shared one with a preacher who taught it of the Jews. He has never been asked to explain that, and he has never volunteered to.
Next: Part 6. In his own words. Three refusals to say Israel has a right to exist, opposition to funding Iron Dome, a refusal to name the IRGC to an Iranian-American whose cousin it hunted, a 2011 defense of the Brotherhood he has never retracted, and the ten questions El-Sayed has not answered.
Links to all six parts of the series:
Part 1. "Sure. Yeah, Absolutely." The long road to a three-word disavowal
Part 2. "Our Organizations." What the FBI and the Brotherhood's own records say
Part 3. The Ann Arbor Years. Inside the MSA chapter he helped run
Part 4. The Circuit. ISNA, CAIR and ICNA-MAS, 2017–2020
Part 5. The Company He Keeps. A rally, a flotilla organizer, a youth council and Hasan Piker
Part 6. In His Own Words. Israel, Hamas, Iran, the Brotherhood, and ten questions
Steven Emerson is an award-winning investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker, and founder and executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), which maintains one of the world's largest archives on Islamist terrorist networks. He is the author or co-author of eight books on terrorism and national security.
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