El-Sayed's ISNA appearance draws scrutiny over speaker lineup
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Michigan Senate candidate, is fielding questions about his appearance at an Islamic Society of North America convention in Detroit after the organization quietly removed Pakistani cleric…
Key takeaways
- ISNA removed Pakistani cleric Mufti Tariq Masood from its Detroit convention speaker lineup before the event, and he did not ultimately speak.
- Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed appeared on a convention panel alongside The Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur and New Jersey-based cleric Zaid Shakir, both of whom have controversial records.
- Masood's past statements included remarks appearing to praise Hitler's persecution of Jews and comments defending child marriage, which drew backlash against ISNA.
- The Zionist Organization of America asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to deny or review any visa issued to Masood, in an Aug. 19 letter from ZOA President Morton Klein.
- The convention took place just days before the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Michigan Senate candidate, is fielding questions about his appearance at an Islamic Society of North America convention in Detroit after the organization quietly removed Pakistani cleric Mufti Tariq Masood from its speaker lineup before the event. The Washington Free Beacon first reported the move. Masood's past statements, including remarks appearing to praise Hitler's persecution of Jews and comments defending child marriage, had drawn public backlash against ISNA.
Masood's removal did not close the questions around the convention. El-Sayed appeared on a panel titled "Cultivating God Awareness in a Turmoiled America" alongside Cenk Uygur, founder of The Young Turks, and Zaid Shakir, a New Jersey-based cleric. Both figures carry their own records. Uygur wrote on X in February that he no longer believes the official September 11 account, saying those who objected had been "brainwashed by corporate media." Shakir has described himself as "extremely anti-American," according to The Washington Free Beacon. The outlet also reported that in 1992, Shakir called on Muslims to embrace "extrasystemic political action," including "noncooperation tactics to guerrilla war," to influence government policies. The convention ran just days before the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
On Masood, Dr. Andrew Bostom told Fox News Digital after reviewing one of the cleric's sermons that he "basically said that the Quran had foreshadowed Hitler 1,400 years ago." Bostom placed the remarks within a broader pattern of antisemitic themes in the writings of some Muslim scholars, citing Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy, the late Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in Egypt, as "the near papal equivalent for Sunni Islam" in terms of his influence. The Zionist Organization of America asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to deny or review any visa issued to Masood. ZOA National President Morton Klein, in an Aug. 19 letter to Rubio, wrote that Masood "praises Hitler's genocide of Jews as doing the right thing, similar to the Quran's instructions." Masood did not ultimately speak at the convention. Whether he had already entered the United States before the event remained unclear at the time, according to Bostom.
El-Sayed's Michigan Senate campaign has faced a series of association questions. He previously campaigned alongside Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who is Uygur's nephew and who said "America deserved 9/11" in 2019 before later retracting the statement. El-Sayed has criticized some of Piker's remarks but has not fully disavowed him. Separately, tweets El-Sayed posted on Sept. 11, 2021, and later deleted, drew attention this week. He wrote that he mourned "the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC" before drawing a parallel to what he characterized as American actions abroad. Fox News Digital reached out to El-Sayed and ISNA for comment.
Related reading
Filed via foxnews.com