Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is facing scrutiny over his appearance at an Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) convention held last week in Detroit. The controversy stems from the organization's decision to remove Mufti Tariq Masood from its speaker lineup after past remarks surfaced that appeared to praise Hitler's persecution of Jews and defend child marriage. Masood had been scheduled to speak at the event alongside El-Sayed.
Andrew Bostom, who reviewed one of Masood's sermons, stated that the cleric suggested the Quran foreshadowed Hitler 1,400 years prior. Bostom characterized Masood's comments as part of a larger pattern of antisemitic themes in some Muslim scholarship, citing the influence of Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy, the late Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University.
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) had previously urged the Secretary of State to review or deny any visa issued to Masood, with ZOA National President Morton Klein calling the cleric "a racist, Jew-hate-mongering, anti-American, anti-British, conspiracy-promoting, murder- and terror-inciter." It was unclear at the time whether Masood had entered the U.S. or planned to attend the convention despite his removal from the speaker list.
While Masood did not ultimately speak, questions persist regarding other speakers at the event and El-Sayed's decision to participate. El-Sayed appeared on a panel titled "Cultivating God Awareness in a Turmoiled America" with Cenk Uygur, founder of The Young Turks, and Zaid Shakir, a New Jersey-based cleric. ISNA described the panel as aiming to transform "taqwa"—God-awareness—into actionable guidance for participants.
Uygur has drawn criticism for past statements, including a February post on X asserting he no longer believes the official 9/11 story. Shakir has been described as "extremely anti-American," and reports indicate he urged Muslims in 1992 to embrace "extrasystemic political action," including tactics ranging from noncooperation to "guerrilla war" to influence government policy.
The ISNA conference took place shortly before the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. El-Sayed himself faced controversy earlier in the week over now-deleted 2021 tweets where he wrote of mourning lives lost in the attacks before adding, "Tomorrow, I’ll mourn ~1M lives, millions of injuries, & infrastructural devastation in 3 countries, perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my country." His campaign had a booth at the conference.
During his address at the ISNA conference, El-Sayed reportedly focused on anti-Muslim sentiment. "We found ourselves in a moment now where, as people point to us, Muslim Americans, they want to tell us that we don’t belong," he said, according to reports. "They want to tell us that this country is not ours. They want to tell us that because of our names or how we pray, that somehow we are less than."
This is not the first time El-Sayed has faced scrutiny over associations. He previously campaigned alongside Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, a nephew of Uygur, who had made controversial remarks about 9/11. While El-Sayed has criticized some of Piker's statements, he has not fully disavowed him.