Abdul El-Sayed’s mother—whom the left-wing Michigan Senate candidate has described as "smart, warm, charismatic" and whom he called on camera in a May campaign video—was active in the Muslim Brotherhood while in college in Egypt, a revelation that further contradicts El-Sayed’s recent claims that neither he nor his family have ties to the radical Islamist group.
Eman Abdelhadi, a University of Chicago professor and El-Sayed’s half-sister, wrote about her mother and other family members’ ties to the Muslim Brotherhood in social media posts in June 2012, just after Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi was elected president of Egypt.
"Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college," wrote Abdelhadi, who is five years younger than El-Sayed and has a different father.
Their mother, Fatten Elkomy, is a nurse in Missouri who attended Alexandria University, one of the largest universities in Egypt. The school was known as a hub of Muslim Brotherhood activity in the 1970s, according to a 2012 report from the Brookings Institution, which noted that "the Muslim Brothers dominated the Islamic Group at Alexandria University" at the time.
El-Sayed himself recounted his mother's campus activism in his book, Healing Politics, writing that she was a "leader on campus" but omitting any mention of the Muslim Brotherhood. A 2012 Columbia Medicine Magazine alumni profile of El-Sayed notes that El-Sayed's mother "studied medicine" in "Alexandria, Egypt" and was an outspoken opponent of military rule in the country, which was briefly interrupted by the election of Morsi. El-Sayed signed a 2012 statement identifying himself as part of a group of "Morsi Supporters in America," the Washington Free Beacon reported.
El-Sayed's parents divorced when he was a toddler, and while he lived with his father, who remarried a white woman from Michigan, he maintains a close relationship with his mother. El-Sayed described his mother as "smart, warm, [and] charismatic" in Healing Politics. He also called her in a 2026 Mother's Day campaign video. "Enjoy the day, and we'll see you soon, ok?" El-Sayed said. "All right. Thank you for calling," Elkomy responded. "Love you, Mama. Talk soon," El-Sayed signed off. Years earlier, in 2020, El-Sayed sent Abdelhadi money on the mobile payment service Venmo for "Mama's bday gift," a Free Beacon review found.
The revelation of Elkomy's role as a Muslim Brotherhood campus activist comes as El-Sayed denies any ties to the Islamist group, which spawned Hamas in Gaza in the 1980s. In a Sunday Meet the Press appearance, El-Sayed said neither he nor his family have connections to the Brotherhood. "You don't have any ties, and your family doesn't?" NBC's Kristen Welker asked. "No," El-Sayed said twice.
But Abdelhadi, who was arrested for assaulting a police officer during an anti-ICE rally in Chicago last year, has repeatedly discussed her family's ties to the Brotherhood, the Free Beacon reported.
"My family has long been MB," she wrote on June 24, 2012. "I have had family jailed for being a part of it," she wrote on July 3, 2013. "Praying for all my family that supports the #MB in Egypt. Lie low, stay safe" she said.
El-Sayed has faced intense scrutiny over his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood from his Republican opponent, former congressman Mike Rogers.
Rogers criticized El-Sayed during a debate last week for accepting thousands of dollars in campaign donations from individuals linked to the Brotherhood. He also noted that El-Sayed's mother worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency until 2004, when the Treasury Department named it a specially designated terrorist organization for providing financial and logistical support to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, including Hamas. Elkomy was named more than a dozen times in court documents connected to the case, and her brother, Mohamed, was a bookkeeper for the organization. El-Sayed, in turn, accused Rogers of bringing up "foreign names" in order to scare voters. He also chided Rogers for mentioning his mother, saying, "You going after my mom?"
The Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood that El-Sayed's mother appears to have belonged to, meanwhile, is considered one of the most violent branches in the sprawling Islamist network. The Trump administration sanctioned it in January for supporting Hamas’s efforts to attack the U.S. and Israel. The European Parliament recommended last week that the Muslim Brotherhood, which operates in more than 70 countries, be designated as a terrorist organization. And a bipartisan group of senators including Republican Ted Cruz and Democrat John Fetterman have proposed a bill to designate the entirety of the Brotherhood as a terrorist group.
El-Sayed has other indirect connections to the Brotherhood and has voiced support for the group in the past.
His father in law, Tayeb Jukaku, is on the board of the Islamic Society of North America, a group known as the public face of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, the Free Beacon reported. In 2012, El-Sayed signed an open letter alongside other Egyptian-Americans that called on the Muslim Brotherhood, led by Morsi, to "purge" the media and police.
It is unclear whether El-Sayed’s father, Mohamed, has any ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. According to El-Sayed, his father studied and taught at Alexandria University until leaving the school in 1978. El-Sayed wrote that his dad "had to leave" Egypt over his "political agitation" against Egyptian military rule. El-Sayed has also said his father left Egypt because he believed "he could express his religion in America better than he could in Egypt at the time."
El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
