Michigan Senate candidate blasts rival over Muslim brotherhood accusations
Washington: Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed said on Sunday (local time) that his Republican rival Mike Rogers tried to link him to the Muslim Brotherhood only because “he really wanted to repeat the word Muslim”, as faith and heritage attacks shadow minority candidates, including several Indian Americans, ahead of the November 3 midterms.
El-Sayed made the remarks in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, recorded on Friday at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant.
Host Kristen Welker said Rogers, a former Congressman, had “repeatedly tried to tie you and members of your family to the Muslim Brotherhood”, making “roughly ten references” in a debate and in campaign ads.
“You know Kristen, the only reason he said those things is because he really wanted to repeat the word Muslim,” El-Sayed said.
Asked whether he or his family had any ties to the group, he replied, “No.”
“His only strategy is to point to me and my name and my faith and to say that we’re different. And that you should suspect people simply because they are different than you in how they pray,” El-Sayed said.
He said such tactics were “the approach of small people with small ideas, who don’t really care about solving big problems”.
He noted that he “was a junior in high school with 9/11” and called the attacks “truly shameful”.
El-Sayed, a physician, cast the issue in terms wider than his own faith.
“I know what it’s like to be discriminated against for how I pray,” he said. “I don’t want anybody to face that in the United States of America, whether they’re being discriminated against because they’re Jewish or Sikh or Hindu or Muslim or Christian.”
He also recalled telling former President Bill Clinton in 2007 that “People like me with names like mine can’t” run for office.
El-Sayed is locked in a tight race with Rogers that could help decide control of the Senate, Welker said.
El-Sayed did not mention Indian-American candidates. But several of them have faced similar attacks over heritage or faith this election cycle.
In Ohio, Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, the son of immigrants from Kerala, has been targeted by far-right commentator Nick Fuentes, who called him an “anchor baby who got your birthright citizenship from your H-1B parents”, according to the Texas Tribune.
“If you believe in normalizing hatred towards any ethnic group – toward Whites, toward Blacks, towards Hispanics, towards Jews, towards Indians, you have no place in the future of the conservative movement,” Ramaswamy said at Turning Point’s AmericaFest in December 2025, as quoted by The Washington Post.
In Texas, Democrat Pooja Sethi, who would be the first Indian American and first Hindu in the state Legislature, replied on X to a Turning Point commentator earlier this year.
“My heritage isn’t an insult. It’s my story,” Sethi wrote.
Another Texas Democrat, India-born Sandeep Srivastava, who is challenging Republican Matt Shaheen in House District 66, faced online attacks over his accent, American Bazaar reported.
Ten Indian Americans are on the November 3 ballot for the US House, four of them incumbents. Three more, including Ramaswamy, are running for governor or other statewide office.
