Left-wing Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed dismissed his sister’s claims that their Egyptian relatives are members of the Muslim Brotherhood as "hearsay" in a heated exchange with Tom Llamas of NBC News. El-Sayed denied any personal knowledge of his family's deep ties to the Islamist organization.
Llamas pressed El-Sayed about social media posts from El-Sayed’s sister, Eman Abdelhadi, in which she said her family has "long been" in the Muslim Brotherhood. Abdelhadi said her relatives in Egypt have been "jailed" over their ties to the group, according to the posts, which were first reported by the Washington Free Beacon. She also said that her and El-Sayed’s mother, Fatten Elkomy, was active in the Brotherhood as a college student in Egypt in the 1970s.
The posts came to light after El-Sayed told Meet the Press on Sunday that neither he nor his family have ties to the Brotherhood. El-Sayed bristled when Llamas asked him to "just explain" them.
"You want to ask me about what was happening in Egypt in 1970? Are you serious?" El-Sayed said. "I get it, but you were asked a question," Llamas responded. "Yeah, I'm telling you, like, we—I have no ties. We have no ties," El-Sayed said. "So your mother had no ties?" asked Llamas. "I have never had these conversations with my mother," said El-Sayed. "Like, you're using hearsay evidence from a tweet. This is not serious."
When Llamas noted that El-Sayed has "gone after the president for truthfulness," El-Sayed responded, "Are you insinuating that somehow I was lying?" "I don't know. That's why I'm asking," Llamas responded.
El-Sayed was born in Michigan in 1984 to Elkomy and Mohamed El-Sayed, who is also Egyptian. Though he was raised by his father and stepmother after his parents split when he was a toddler, El-Sayed kept close ties to Elkomy and Abdelhadi. He called Elkomy in a Mother's Day campaign video. Years earlier, in 2020, he sent money to Abdelhadi on Venmo for their mother’s birthday gift. He also served as guardian for Abdelhadi at her 2016 wedding, which was conducted under Sharia law and which featured Elkomy, the Free Beacon reported.
It’s not the first time El-Sayed claims to have been kept out of the loop of his Egyptian family’s doings. He said as recently as 2016 that he had "dual citizenship" in Egypt and the United States. His campaign now says that statement was an "error" and based on inaccurate information from an unnamed relative.
El-Sayed has other links to the Muslim Brotherhood, which spawned Hamas in Gaza in the 1980s.
In 2012, he signed an open letter calling on the newly elected Brotherhood to "purge" the press and police in Egypt, the Free Beacon reported. In a since-deleted 2021 Substack post, El-Sayed defended a "friend" of his who was jailed for funding the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, considered to be one of the most violent chapters of the group. El-Sayed's father in law, Tayeb Jukaku, is a longtime board member of the Islamic Society of North America, which federal prosecutors identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front group.
Abdelhadi, who was arrested last year for assaulting a cop in Chicago during an anti-ICE protest, did not respond to questions about her brother’s remarks.
