Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is scheduled to speak at an Islamic convention this weekend—six days before the 25th anniversary of 9/11—on a panel alongside a "9/11 truther" and a Muslim cleric conspiracy theorist who has called for an "examination" of the official narrative surrounding the terrorist attacks.
El-Sayed is headlining the Islamic Society of North America's annual convention in Detroit on Saturday. There, El-Sayed will speak on a panel to examine a "turmoiled America" alongside left-wing pundit Cenk Uygur and Zaid Shakir, an outspoken New Jersey-based cleric, according to a convention itinerary.
Both men have promoted conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11, in which al Qaeda operatives killed 2,977 Americans.
"I no longer believe [sic] official 9/11 story," Uygur declared in a social media rant in February. Uygur, who hosts the Young Turks YouTube show, is now pushing debunked claims about Israeli involvement in the attacks, including the "dancing Israelis" myth, an antisemitic conspiracy theory that posits that five Israeli spies filmed and celebrated the terrorist attack. "I didn't know we arrested Israeli spies who were here to 'document the event,'" wrote Uygur, who is the uncle of Hasan Piker, a close El-Sayed ally who has said that "America deserved 9/11."
Uygur was widely mocked for, as one outlet described it, "going full 9/11 truther."
Shakir has similarly called for an "examination" of what he described as "glaring weaknesses and inconsistencies" in the official 9/11 narrative. He has argued that the U.S. government used the attacks to "launch a war on Islam," and he directed followers to the writings of David Ray Griffin, a leading 9/11 conspiracy theorist who has argued that the United States orchestrated the attacks.
El-Sayed's appearance alongside the conspiracy theorists comes as his own record of seeking to minimize the horror of 9/11, and to draw equivalence between 9/11 victims and casualties of the war on terror, is under scrutiny.
CBS News reported on Monday that El-Sayed deleted two COVID-era social media posts in which he compared the 9/11 death toll to COVID deaths and said the latter deserved the same outraged response. In posts on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, El-Sayed drew an equivalence between the attacks and the ensuing war on terror, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
El-Sayed has also faced withering scrutiny over his close ties to Piker, a popular left-wing influencer who has campaigned with El-Sayed. El-Sayed has repeatedly refused to fully disavow Piker's remarks about 9/11, saying that they have been "taken out of context" and that Piker is a victim of "cancel culture."
And El-Sayed has sought to link "Islamophobia" after 9/11 to health problems for Muslims and Arabs.
In a Sept. 11, 2012, essay for CNN that called Muslims "another victim of 9/11," El-Sayed cited a study conducted in California that found a dramatic increase in premature births for Muslim women after 9/11 compared with before the attacks. El-Sayed attributed the spike to "discrimination and marginalization" that Muslim women experienced after the attacks.
El-Sayed omitted from his essay the findings of his own study comparing birth outcomes for Muslim women before and after 9/11, however. El-Sayed's study, conducted in Michigan, found no difference in premature births for Muslim women after 9/11 and found overall that Arab and Muslim women were at "significantly" lower risk for premature births compared to white, black, and Asian mothers, the Free Beacon reported.
Shakir, in addition to propagating 9/11 conspiracy theories, has blamed Israel for other terrorist attacks and called for Muslims to use "guerrilla warfare" to achieve their desired political outcomes.
In a 1992 treatise, Shakir argued for Muslims to embrace "extrasystemic political action," ranging from "noncooperation tactics to guerrilla war" in order to influence government policies or eradicate the "system" altogether. Shakir asserted that "every major Muslim political gain" in modern history was brought about through such action, and cited the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the "armed struggle" that led to Taliban control of Afghanistan.
A copy of Shakir's pamphlet was discovered in the apartment of a suspect in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the New York Times reported in 2006.
Shakir, who describes himself as "extremely anti-American," has claimed that "Zionist forces" were behind that attack.
"Considering the available information, it is the view of some observers that the WTC bombing was undertaken by the Zionist forces to give proof to their allegations concerning the magnitude of 'Islamic fundamentalist' terrorism, and as a pretext to intensify their anti-Islamic propaganda campaign in the U.S. media," Shakir wrote in the magazine Inquiry. "This campaign has been so calculating that one immediately suspects it could not have risen accidentally. "
El-Sayed has already faced scrutiny over the Islamic Society of North America convention. The group, for which El-Sayed's father-in-law serves as a founding committee member, has extensive ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a 2008 Hamas fundraising case. The convention will also feature a Texas-based cleric, Yasir Qadhi, who has called the Holocaust a "hoax."
Pakistani cleric Tariq Masood was scheduled to appear at the event, but he was pulled after the Free Beacon reported that he admitted to forcing his 13-year-old niece into marriage, in compliance with Islamic law, and that he'd been accused of "pedophilic rhetoric."
El-Sayed's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
