El-Sayed denies Muslim Brotherhood ties; half-sister's old posts cited by right-leaning outlets

Right · 2Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate in Michigan's U.S. Senate race, denied on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday 11 October that they or their family have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. 1 2 Right · 1Asked by host Kristen Welker whether they have any ties and whether their family does, El-Sayed answered "No" both times, and suggested that their Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, was floating Islamophobic attacks against them and their family. 1 Right · 2The Washington Free Beacon reported, and Breitbart and Fox News relayed, that El-Sayed's half-sister Eman Abdelhadi, a University of Chicago professor, wrote about family links to the Brotherhood in social media posts in 2012 and 2013. 2 1

Right · 2The quoted posts include "My family has long been MB" (2012), "I have had family jailed for being a part of it" (3 July 2013) and "Praying for all my family that supports the #MB in Egypt. Lie low, stay safe" (2013). 2 1 Right · 1Fox News also quoted a 2012 post in which Abdelhadi wrote about talking with their mother about "her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college"; it said the mother, Fatten Elkomy, attended Alexandria University, where a Brookings Institution report found strong Brotherhood activity in the 1970s. 1 Right · 1Quoting the Free Beacon, Breitbart said the family ties run through El-Sayed's mother, who it said once worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency, which was sanctioned for funding al-Qaeda; the excerpts do not include a response from El-Sayed to that claim. 2

Right · 1Rogers posted that El-Sayed's denial was "an outright lie" and that the candidate is "too extreme" for the Senate. 2 Right · 1An El-Sayed campaign spokesperson told Fox News that El-Sayed "is a dad and a doctor," that independent fact checkers have debunked Rogers's claims, and that the campaign continues to use "bad faith attacks on Abdul's faith and family"; the campaign has also called the Brotherhood accusations "debunked as racist and untrue." 1 Right · 1Breitbart added context that a November executive order by President Donald Trump designated certain Brotherhood chapters (Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt) as foreign terrorist organizations; the posts describe family or maternal ties and do not themselves show that El-Sayed has any tie. 2