Trump escalates attacks on Muslim Senate hopeful, drawing Arab American rebuke

President Trump intensified attacks on Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed at a rally in Port Huron Sunday, calling him a “jihadist” who was “on the side of the terrorists” and questioning his loyalty to US. The remarks drew condemnation from a former Trump ally in the Arab American community.Trump said El-Sayed, a former Detroit health official, would “have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into Senate”. He repeatedly invoked the 9/11 attacks and compared blocking El-Sayed from the Senate chamber with passengers fighting hijackers aboard United Flight 93.El-Sayed would become the first Muslim American senator if elected. He has denied any ties to extremist groups and called attacks on his loyalty “shameful”. At a Grand Rapids rally later Sunday, he responded to Trump’s repeated mockery of his name: “I don’t even care that he remembers my whole name because he can just go on and call me ‘senator’ after Nov,” El-Sayed said. “I will be Senator Muhammad to you, bro.”Bishara Bahbah, a founder of Arab Americans for Trump, which helped lead Trump’s outreach to Arab American voters in 2024, called the comments racist. “The president’s statements are out of line,” he said. “They are crossing a red line. They are racist.” The organisation has since been renamed Arab Americans for Peace.Bahbah said the remarks were unacceptable to Arab and Muslim communities, including Christian Arabs, and voters would remember them on Nov 3. Trump won Dearborn in 2024, becoming the first Republican presidential candidate since 2000 to carry the city, which has one of the country’s largest concentrations of Arab Americans. Many voters had opposed the Biden administration’s handling of the Gaza war.The race between El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers to succeed retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters is among a handful that could determine control of the Senate. With Republicans under pressure over inflation, fuel prices and the Iran war, Trump has portrayed El-Sayed as a threat to US.Trump also declared he had come to Michigan “to keep a jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States senator”.There is no evidence El-Sayed has any affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood. Republicans have cited a 2012 social media post by his half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, who wrote that “my family has long been MB” and described their mother’s involvement with the group in the early 1970s. El-Sayed was born in the US to Egyptian immigrant parents who divorced when he was young. He was raised by his father, not his biological mother.Rogers questioned El-Sayed’s loyalty during their final general-election debate, asking, “Are you for America, or are you for these terrorist groups overseas?” El-Sayed replied: “I’m proud of our Constitution that guarantees all of us the right to pray as we choose to pray.” Rogers repeated the Muslim Brotherhood allegation before Trump’s appearance. Trump attacked El-Sayed’s links to streamer Hasan Piker, who appeared with him during the primary campaign. Piker has said “Hamas is a thousand times better” than Israel, called some Orthodox Jews “inbred” and said “America deserved 9/11.”El-Sayed has also faced criticism over his rhetoric. After an attack on a Detroit-area synagogue, he said “hurt people hurt people”. The attacker had lost four relatives in an Israeli airstrike on Lebanon a week earlier. El-Sayed later apologised, saying he had not intended to justify the attack.Senator Bernie Sanders, appearing with El-Sayed in Grand Rapids, accused Trump and his allies of using Islamophobia because they had “nothing to say” about healthcare, housing and income inequality. “All they can do is foment hatred and divisiveness,” he said.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.