Abdul El-Sayed — Michigan: A Door Opens, and a Character Is Tested
Tarek Abou Ghazala — Editor
Abdul El-Sayed was born in south-east Michigan to parents who had emig
Abdul El-Sayed was born in south-east Michigan to parents who had emigrated from Egypt. He trained as a physician, took a second doctorate at Oxford, served as Detroit's health commissioner and then as an administrator in Wayne County. He had run for governor in 2018 and lost the primary to Gretchen Whitmer.
On 4 August he won the Democratic nomination against Representative Haley Stevens, in a primary marked by record outside spending against him. The general election against the Republican Mike Rogers became the most expensive in the state's history, with total spending above $240 million.
During it, his opponent repeated an allegation that he was linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed denied it flatly and called the questioning of his loyalty to the Constitution "shameful." On 25 October, at a rally in Port Huron, President Trump said in substance that he had come to keep a "jihadist" out of the United States Senate.
The race was called at about 2:27 a.m. with roughly 88% counted: 52% to 46%. In Detroit, El-Sayed told his supporters, in substance, "Michigan, we did it," thanked those who had welcomed him into "your homes, your churches, your synagogues," and spoke to the parents who had struggled to explain to their children why a man is mocked for his name or for the way he prays.
The same speech carried mockery of his opponent ("enjoy your retirement"; "you chose hate, and Michigan chose hope") and of the vice-president ("Michigan 1, Ohio 0"). Chants of "Free Palestine" were raised in the hall, and his victory had caused disquiet among a section of the state's Jewish community; he has pledged to confront antisemitism.
He becomes the first Muslim elected to the United States Senate.
We chose the verse from al-Ḥujurāt because it cuts in two directions rather than one, and that is where its instruction lies.
It judges, first, what was done to the man. To make a person's name and his prayer material for derision and suspicion is a cheap instrument of pushback, and it was used in this race from the highest platform in the country. It also failed in its purpose, if it is true that its target emerged from it victorious.
It judges, second, the victory speech itself. The man who complained of being mocked for his name closed his night by mocking his opponent and the vice-president. This is not an indictment of a person; elation after a brutal campaign is an understandable human reflex. It is a record of what the law of pushback says always: that whoever is pushed with an instrument tends to push with it once it is in his hand, and that the instrument changes hands faster than the seat does.
There is a second push in this article: one inside his own party. He beat his rival in the primary, and days before the vote she came back to endorse his Republican opponent. From this the sensitivity of the night can be understood: the seat did not move between parties — it was already Democratic, and his win did not change the chamber's balance — what moved was the face of the person sitting in it.
A third face should not be passed over: a door that opens for one community may leave behind unease in another that shares the same state. The magazine does not adjudicate between that unease and those who answer it. It records that a push is rarely without cost, and that whoever arrives still owes reassurance to those who did not vote for him.
Limits of this reading
- "First Muslim" is a symbolic fact; no position on any particular policy, domestic or foreign, can be inferred from it.
- The effect of presidential rhetoric on the result cannot be measured from a single night; polls in the final days showed El-Sayed ahead both before and after the rally.
- What is reported here of disquiet among a section of Michigan's Jewish community is drawn from press coverage; it is a description of what was said, not a verdict on those who said it or on those who answered.