Faith and Family Ties Draw Scrutiny in Michigan Senate Race

The Michigan Senate contest between Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed has become one of the most closely watched races in the country. Rogers is 63, a former FBI agent and ex-congressman backed strongly by President Trump. El-Sayed is a doctor and political newcomer who would become the first Muslim U.S. senator in American history if elected.

Trump and Rogers have put El-Sayed's identity at the center of their speeches. The president has called him "a jihadist" and suggested he would have to pass through a metal detector before entering the Senate, remarks critics have denounced as Islamophobic. At a recent rally in Grand Rapids, El-Sayed said the president could simply call him "senator" after November. A poll released Wednesday by CBS Detroit and other Michigan TV stations shows him ahead by 7 percentage points.

Reports on El-Sayed's background have circulated widely, including coverage in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times about his family's possible ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. He told Fox News he has never been a member and never will be. His campaign calls the line of questioning a bad faith attack on his religion and family, and describes him as a dad and a doctor. It did not answer detailed questions from CBS News.

Much of the attention falls on his mother, Fatten Elkomy. After his Egyptian immigrant parents separated when he was a toddler, she moved to Missouri and worked as a nurse for the Islamic American Relief Agency. The FBI raided the group's Columbia, Missouri, offices on Oct. 13, 2004, and the agency was shut down by the Treasury and Justice Departments that year for violating sanctions and aiding al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Elkomy was not accused of wrongdoing. Letters she sent documenting financial transactions between 1999 and 2001 were among the trial exhibits, the Times reported.

El-Sayed's half-sister, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, wrote in social media posts from 2012 that their mother had been active in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the early 1970s. El-Sayed told NBC News the claim was hearsay and that he has "no ties." His campaign says he is estranged from his mother, though she reportedly attended his 2014 medical school graduation, and a 2021 Substack column mentioned a Thanksgiving visit to her in Missouri.

His father, Mohamed El-Sayed, 74, is an automotive engineer and former Alexandria University professor who left Egypt in his 20s during a crackdown under Anwar Sadat. He later pursued a PhD at Wayne State University in Detroit. El-Sayed's father-in-law, Tayeb Jukaku, is a kidney doctor, a past president and current board member of CAIR Michigan, and a member of the founders' committee of the Islamic Society of North America. Both groups were named unindicted coconspirators in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial but were never charged. CAIR says it is a civil rights organization targeted by conspiracy theories. Jukaku has given more than $300,000 to his son-in-law's campaign.

Other items in El-Sayed's history have also drawn notice. He served as a board member and "Brothers' Outreach Chair" of the Muslim Students' Association at the University of Michigan. An expert at George Washington University said Brotherhood members and sympathizers helped found the national group in the 1960s, though it was not a "pure" Brotherhood organization. He was also one of 46 Egyptian-Americans who signed a petition urging Egypt's then president, Mohamed Morsi, to purge the media and police of allies of the prior regime.

El-Sayed's Substack writings, which reached 55,000 email subscribers, were sharply critical of U.S. support for Israel, though a 2021 column also said Hamas was wrong. His endorsements range from the United Auto Workers, the Teamsters and the Sierra Club to CAIR Action, whose super PAC gave $115,000 to a committee supporting him. Americans for Justice in Palestine, tied to American Muslims for Palestine, also backs him. That group is fighting a lawsuit from a couple whose son was killed in a 1996 Hamas attack, which it calls guilt by association. His campaign did not respond to questions about the groups' support.