Michael Arria is a U.S. correspondent for Mondoweiss. His work has appeared in In These Times, The Appeal, and Truthout. He is the author of Medium Blue: The Politics of MSNBC.
(RNS) — Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive former public health official, who won the Michigan Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, made history Tuesday (April 4) by becoming the the first Muslim to win a Senate primary. If El-Sayed, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Egypt, succeeds over his Republican challenger, former Congressman Mike Rogers, in November, he will become the first Muslim to serve in the Senate.
Here are five takeaways about El-Sayed and the role religion played in his primary campaign.
El-Sayed represents a milestone for American Muslims
The 41-year-old epidemiologist succeeded in the Tuesday (Aug. 4) primary amid rising anti-Muslim hate, intimidation and discrimination incidents across the country. At the same time, his victory follows that of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, also the first Muslim to serve in his role, who won the mayoral contest in 2025.
He follows a now established pattern of progressive Muslims such as Mamdani, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.
“Abdul’s victory shows that Muslims belong in American politics,” said Nada Al-Hanooti, a Michigan native and deputy organizing director at Emgage, a Muslim political group. “Candidates like Abdul are proving that Muslims are Americans. We’re Americans just as anyone else. And when we are in positions of leadership, we are not only serving the Muslim community; we’re serving all Americans.”
Attendees listen as Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive candidate in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan, speaks during a primary election night event Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026, at the Majestic Theatre in Detroit. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
El-Sayed is a proud Muslim
El-Sayed has not shied away from talking about his Muslim faith on the campaign trail. In a pre-victory speech Tuesday, for example, El-Sayed used the word “inshallah,” or “God-willing,” saying he would win against Republican Rogers in November.
Born in Rochester Hills, Michigan, north of Detroit, his first language was Arabic.
“I believe deeply in the role that faith has played in my life, in, you know, how it orients me to try and be a better person, to give more of myself, to know my fellow creation, to treat people — all people — with dignity and humanity and respect,” he told RNS in an October 2025 interview.
El-Sayed has said he believes in the fundamental separation of church and state, adding that he wants “to protect the kind of America where everybody can pray how they choose to pray, or choose not to pray at all.”
Imam Suleiman Hani, a resident scholar at the Muslim Community Mosque in Farmington Hills, Michigan, who has known El-Sayed for years, described the candidate as a practicing Muslim who has long been a part of Ann Arbor and Detroit-area Muslim communities. He said it was remarkable that El-Sayed did not budge on his values, despite historic campaign spending from his primary opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens.
El-Sayed proposed to his wife, Sarah Jukaku, when the two were undergraduates at the University of Michigan. She is also a Muslim, the daughter of immigrants from India, who wears a hijab, the traditional headscarf worn by many Muslim women. The couple has two daughters.
Abdul El-Sayed, with his wife, Sarah Jukaku, departs following a news conference at the Spirit of Detroit shortly after winning the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Michigan, Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
El-Sayed’s victory offers further proof that Democrats critical of Israel can win
El-Sayed has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and said he would cut U.S. military aid to Israel. And he has suggested that Israel should not exist as an explicitly Jewish state.
His win, following Mamdani’s groundbreaking victory last November, is a clear sign that Democratic support for Israel is declining, and that candidates for public office who criticize Israel are electable.
Michigan’s Jewish citizens largely opposed El-Sayed’s candidacy, although final election demographic data is not yet available. The Jewish Democratic Council of America endorsed Stevens.
Jewish congregations, which do not typically make endorsements, nonetheless made their views known. Shaarey Zedek, a large Conservative congregation in Southfield, Michigan, took the unusual step of sending a letter to each household in the 1,000-member congregation urging everyone to vote.
Though the letter did not name the candidates, it called on congregants of Shaarey Zedek to “support in this primary the candidate whose record, actions and rhetoric demonstrate the strongest commitment to protecting Jewish lives … and supporting Israel’s security and right to exist as a Jewish state.”
In interviews, Shaarey Zedek’s rabbi, Aaron Starr, who is also president of the Michigan Board of Rabbis, said Stevens has been “an ongoing friend of the Jewish community.”
His win is a signal the power of AIPAC may have peaked
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent more than $30 million boosting Stevens through its United Democracy Project, a super PAC that has infused millions of dollars to prop up pro-Israel candidates. AIPAC is a secular organization, and many of its donors are not Jewish, but it has been encouraged and guided by Israeli governments.
By the sheer amount of its spending, AIPAC has typically ensured the candidate with the most money wins. In 2022, it spent $4.3 million on Stevens to unseat former Rep. Andy Levin, who is Jewish but a critic of Israel’s government. It succeeded.
Levin, who now works as a green energy entrepreneur and climate consultant, supported El-Sayed in the primary. He told RNS that the days of AIPAC influence are changing.
“The American people are just fed up with politics as usual, money in politics, the influence of corporations and special interests like AIPAC,” Levin said. “They’re sick of it; they want truth-telling, they want authenticity and they want bravery.”
Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel lobbying group that has served as a counterweight to AIPAC, summed up the change in a blogpost titled, “The Beatles’ Message to AIPAC: Money Can’t Buy You Love.”
Jews for Abdul and Muslims for Abdul canvassed together for U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed during the final days of the Democratic campaign. Among them was Barbara Weinberg Barefield, second from right. (Photo courtesy of Barbara Weinberg Barefield)
A small but energetic group of liberal Jews proudly campaigned for him
Liberal Jewish Michigan residents formed a “Jews for Abdul” group. In the final days of the campaign, it canvassed alongside another group, “Muslims for Abdul.”
Jews in this group forcefully condemned Israel’s war on Gaza and its violent assaults on West Bank Palestinians.
“So much of what Abdul stands for is that we should not be sending billions of dollars to kill children in Gaza, in Palestine or anywhere else in the world,” said Barbara Weinberg Barefield, a 76-year-old artist and activist from Detroit who was part of Jews for Abdul. “That money should be used for peaceful humanitarian purposes and should be directed toward the needs that we have in this country: health care, education, infrastructure, jobs, food, utilities, all the things that people need so desperately in Detroit and in Michigan.”
That view is growing. A poll of American Jews earlier this year found that 70% of American Jews oppose unconditional military and financial assistance to Israel.
One synagogue in particular, T’chiyah, a small Reconstructionist congregation in Ferndale, north of Detroit, reached out to El-Sayed and formed good relations with him, inviting him to a Passover seder in April.
Levin, a member of T’chiyah and the congregation’s former president, said other Jews should welcome El-Sayed.
“What I say to my fellow Jews is this: If we’re so proud of how deeply we believe in this American experiment, in this idea of representation, don’t we think Muslims should have representation?” he asked.
In a victory speech on Wednesday morning, El-Sayed appealed to Jewish voters and tried to allay their fears. The question for El-Sayed now is whether he will pull more Jews into his campaign as he heads into the November midterms.
“To all of my sisters and brothers of the Jewish faith, or any faith at all, or no faith at all, I want you to know that my commitment to your safety — to Jewish safety — is the same commitment that I have to the safety of my own daughters,” El-Sayed said.
(RNS) — Eight years ago, Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and public health official, announced his run for governor in Michigan following the rise of the Flint water crisis and months after President Donald J. Trump announced (in his first term) the first iteration of the “Muslim” travel ban.
He lost in the Democratic primary — amid racist attacks and conspiracy theories hurled at him — to Gretchen Whitmer, now Michigan’s governor.
At the time, El-Sayed spoke to the Detroit Free Press about being questioned by opponents and critics if a candidate who is a “little bit young, a little bit brown, a little bit Muslim” could win the gubernatorial primary.
But his run for U.S. Senator is a different story.
In the midst of one of the most anti-Muslim and volatile primary elections in recent history, during Trump’s second term and against the backdrop of continuing tensions over the reported genocide in Gaza and the U.S.’s ongoing funding of Israel’s various war campaigns, El-Sayed eked out a narrow Democratic primary victory this week in his senatorial campaign against Rep. Haley Stevens.
That victory speaks volumes about Michiganders’ discontent with — and anger over — the direction of their state, as well as the extraordinary community organizing that persisted despite immense pushback and millions of dollars spent on efforts to defeat El-Sayed. It also sends a clear message about how many American Muslim political candidates are choosing to campaign in Trump’s second term.
Attendees listen as Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive candidate in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan, speaks during a primary election night event Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026, at the Majestic Theatre in Detroit. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
El-Sayed stood strong on a variety of progressive policy platforms (abolishing ICE, Medicare for all, opposing unconditional aid to foreign governments like Israel) and centered coalition building while leaning harder into his Muslim and Arab American identities. Unapologetic authenticity, coupled with strong policy positions focused on fighting injustice, is a key strategy for building American Muslim political power amid targeted hate and vitriol.
“With Abdul it was very clear: ‘Money out of pockets, money out of politics, Medicare for all,’” said Mussab Ali, a consultant for El-Sayed’s campaign who ran for Congress in New Jersey’s 8th Congressional District and served on the Jersey City Board of Education from 2018 to 2022.
“This moment that we’re in is a very special moment for American politics. A big thing … is people rejecting Islamophobia. Just because people love differently or practice their faith differently doesn’t mean they are any less American.”
There has been a significant shift between Trump’s first and second term in how American Muslims have run for office, Ali said. According to a report from the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Jetpac, more than 300 Muslims ran for office during the president’s first term.
In his second term, what has become clear is that when a Muslim runs for office, the stakes are even higher, the Islamophobic attacks more vicious and the threats and acts of violence much worse.
Ali, who first ran for office in New Jersey in 2017 when he was 19 years old as a response to Trump accusing Muslims of cheering on 9/11 in Jersey City, said the moment is very different now and is a fight for the future of this nation.
“What it means to be Muslim in this time is to speak up against injustice. The Quran teaches us that if injustice is happening, do something with your hand, your speech, your heart. Our home country is not the home country of our forefathers. It’s not Egypt for Abdul, it’s not Pakistan for me. It’s America,” he said.
El-Sayed, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Virginia Lieutenant Governor Ghazala Hashmi and others are spurring the movement of Muslim candidates who are running for office and often winning. Their success is juxtaposed against ever-increasing anti-Islamic rhetoric from the president and an alarming number of Congress members and senators, as well as political advocacy groups and political action committees.
And more often than not, those victories (and campaigns like Salaam Bhatti’s Democratic primary run for Congress in Virginia’s first district that don’t cross the finish line but make an impact) are indicative of a shift in focus from progress and victory not coming in spite of hate and rhetoric, but rather building off of it.
“People are seeing the truth,” said Haris Tarin, the vice president of policy and programming for the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
“I think finally there is an unveiling that has happened on the Israel-Gaza issue. That dam has broken, and people see through what AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and what some corporations are trying to do. And I also think it’s because of the economy — struggling to pay rent, buy groceries, gas prices.”
Indeed, with AIPAC spending $30 million and upwards of $70 million combined with affiliated PACs and corporate PACs in trying to defeat El-Sayed in the primary, Tarin said what became extremely clear was that people are seeing through the money.
“It does not buy authenticity; it does not buy a strong candidate.”
And these victories are more than just moments in Muslim political power, he added.
“It’s a trajectory, and not just for American Muslims, (who are) seeing how government power has been used to go after them and are pushing back,” he said. People also are not listening to the same tired narratives about minority communities. “You’re seeing that with American Muslim and other candidates — they told their own stories.”
Political strategist and Michigan-based community organizer Machhadie Assi agreed, saying the values El-Sayed consistently uplifted in his campaign resonated with voters and ultimately broke through the intense anti-Muslim hate. “Justice, dignity and standing with the vulnerable — for Muslims these resonate with our religious values. But they are also universal,” she said. “You don’t need to follow a specific religion to know the value of standing against injustice and standing for dignity.”
Assi also said that, in Michigan, grassroots organizing “superseded the power of money … That’s where I see the victory coming across.”
The attacks against El-Sayed’s faith and Muslims in general will only continue to grow uglier in the days leading up to the general election. But his strength lies in building coalitions, leaning into grassroots support and staying true to his principles.
“We’re (succeeding) because of the love of being able to be a changemaker and believing that we are truly American and genuinely Muslim. Both can co-exist,” said Assi. “If we don’t believe we’re American enough, we won’t be able to truly shift policy. It helps us believe more in the intersectionality of this movement — like Abdul says, brick by brick.”
(Dilshad D. Ali is a freelance journalist. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
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