Abdul El-Sayed did not have to become less Muslim to win
His historic victory in Michigan shows that Muslim Americans need not abandon their identity to succeed in politics.
Messages popped up on my WhatsApp account from New York, Gaza, Pakistan and Australia. Friends and colleagues were following Michigan’s Senate race, talking excitedly about Abdul El-Sayed. As the results from Wayne County sealed his victory on Tuesday, I felt something I had rarely felt before in American politics: not a muted relief that someone had lost but genuine joy and hope that someone had won.
El-Sayed, a physician and former Detroit health director, defeated Republican Mike Rogers. He will be the first Muslim ever elected to the United States Senate. As a Muslim American from Michigan, this hit home.
Like many in Michigan’s Muslim community, I knew of Abdul long before he became a fixture in national headlines, from his 2018 gubernatorial campaign to his Friday sermons in local mosques. As Ramadan began this year, I attended one of his town halls for Muslim constituents. Before a few dozen community members and leaders, Abdul pledged to fight for all Michiganders. His sincerity and commitment to that pledge remained evident even as the pressures of the campaign intensified. I have seen him attend funerals for community members near my home and watched him go from person to person, greeting people with kindness. Even in the final days of an exhausting campaign, he responded personally to messages from the community, including mine.
That moment was electric, not because Arabic phrases alone are a sign of solidarity – even former President Joe Biden said “inshallah” in a debate before proceeding to commit genocide against Palestinians and aid the bombing of mosques and burning of Qurans – but because his Muslim identity had survived a countrywide effort by special interest groups and racists to make it disqualifying. His faith, Islam, is a value system he actively chooses every day, a commitment he strives to live out in public life. His being Muslim mattered to me more than his Arab ethnicity or ancestral origins, a simple happenstance of birth.