Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed sought support at least five Islamic centers with histories of extremist rhetoric, including statements describing the United States as “the House of Satan” and calling for “the final annihilation of Jews,” The Post has learned.
In March 2026, El-Sayed visited the Islamic Center of Detroit to build support for his campaign. He addressed a packed gathering of men during a Ramadan prayer service and asked worshippers to sign petitions allowing him to qualify for the Michigan Democratic primary ballot.
“I have to get on the ballot to be able to get your vote, inshallah. So, my team is here in the back … we need your signature to get on the ballot,” El-Sayed told the congregation. A mosque leader had welcomed him to the pulpit, introducing him as “our beloved brother Dr. Abdulrahman.”
“Please don’t leave here without doing that,” he said, according to video from the center’s YouTube channel reviewed by The Post.
During the same service, a leader delivered a closing prayer in Arabic asking Allah to take the “worst revenge” against Zionists.
“The Zionists have spread corruption in the land. Your forbearance has deceived them, so show them your power … They killed our brothers and sisters, so take the worst revenge upon them,” the leader sang, according to the footage.
“Raise no banner for them in the lands of the Muslims … foil their plans in every time and place,” he continued.
In 2025, an Islamic scholar told the congregation that Muslims were “living here in America, in the house of Satan,” while also making the unsubstantiated claim that the US Constitution was based on Islam.
“I’m expecting some rough time during the next four years, so it is important for us to be able and ready to say no, this is not a Christian country, this was not built by the Judeo-Christian tradition,” Dr. Zulfiqar Shah said during a recorded service in January 2025.
“It was built upon the Islamic ideology.”
In March 2024, another religious leader at the center called for the killing of all “Zionist aggressors.”
“Count them one by one and kill them all, scattering them, and leave not one of them,” he said, according to videos translated by the Middle East Forum.
El-Sayed, 41, has appeared at multiple events at the Islamic Center of Detroit over the years, dating back to at least 2017. News reports also show that he attended a political meeting at the mosque in 2019.
The Detroit center is not the only tax-exempt Islamic institution where El-Sayed has sought campaign support despite a record of hateful rhetoric from speakers.
El-Sayed also appeared at the Islamic Organization of North America in Warren, which has hosted speakers who called for “the final annihilation of Jews.”
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The Senate candidate visited the organization in September, when his campaign set up a booth to seek donations and volunteers and distribute campaign flyers.
“They will be exterminated. … And actually, this greater Israel would become their greater graveyard. And it has been established to drag all the Israelis from all the corners of the world to their graveyard. And here they will perish,” a speaker said at the organization in 2013.
At the American Moslem Society in Dearborn, one of the Detroit area’s largest and oldest mosques, El-Sayed campaigned last week. Leaders there have previously prayed to “let us live upon jihad and cause us to die upon martyrdom.”
During his appearance, El-Sayed invoked faith and moral responsibility as he urged the crowd to support his campaign, while also condemning US backing for Israel.
“We deserve to know that our money isn’t being wasted to make war, to do genocide, to backstop apartheid,” he told the crowded room.
El-Sayed also spoke at the Islamic Institute of America — which prayed for Allah to “show vengeance and wrath against the criminal Zionists” — and the Islamic House of Wisdom — which called for “disbelievers to be neutralized if not destroyed” — both in Dearborn Heights in June.
“El-Sayed is a terrorist sympathizer who has taken every opportunity to excuse Islamic extremism and platform radical imams, Muslim Brotherhood-linked networks, and people who said America deserved 9/11,” slammed Natalie Baldassarre, National Press Secretary for the Republican National Committee.
“He’s a better fit for Guantanamo Bay than the halls of Congress, and Michiganders should keep this jihadist as far away from power as possible.”
Meanwhile two other centers that have a history of violent speech — the Muslim Educational Community Center of America in Canton and the American Muslim Diversity Association in Sterling Heights — urged worshippers to send El-Sayed to the Senate.
“It’s mandatory to go and to elect brother Abdul El-Sayed because at least we know he’s a Muslim,” Saleh Qazwini, imam for the former, said. “We have to all come out in numbers.”
El-Sayed’s family ties and own associations with designated terror and extremist groups have dogged his campaign.
His father, Mohammed El-Sayed, sits on the board of Life for Relief and Development, an Islamic charity accused of funneling money to Hamas and Saddam Hussein.
His mother, Fatten Elkomy, worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency, a group accused of funding bin Laden, Hamas and Taliban, and was an activist with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that seeks to establish Sharia law.
And El-Sayed himself penned a 2012 letter in support of the Brotherhood, a designated a terrorist organization by the State Department.
He’s denied his ties and did not return The Post’s request for comment.