OPINION:
The word “brotherhood” conjures thoughts of charity work, fellowship and wholesome Americana.
Yet burrowed throughout the global Islamic movement is the Muslim Brotherhood, a dark, violence-supporting operation. Its chapters have been banned in multiple Muslim countries, and President Trump has designated several of its chapters as foreign terrorist organizations.
The Brotherhood has now generated elevated interest, with Abdul El-Sayed a step away from becoming the U.S. Senate’s first apparent jihad-sympathetic member. In Michigan, home to Hamtramck — which has the first U.S. Muslim-majority city council — Mr. El-Sayed and Republican challenger Mike Rogers are in a neck-and-neck battle for the open Senate seat.
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Mr. El-Sayed has campaigned with podcaster Hasan Piker, a self-proclaimed admirer of Maoist China who has said, “America deserved 9/11.”
Mr. El-Sayed’s family has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, according to the Senate candidate’s own half sister, Eman Abdelhadi. Ms. Abdelhadi posted to social media in 2012 about their mother’s “activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college,” according to The Washington Free Beacon.
Ms. Abdelhadi, a University of Chicago professor, has said she wrote a novel, “Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072,” in which the character Bilal Hassan calls the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-perpetrated massacre of Israelis “the most beautiful day of my life.”
The Brotherhood’s Egyptian wing, ideology and leaders were inspirations for the rise of Hamas and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda. Hosted in Qatar, Brotherhood leaders were seen as an existential threat by Persian Gulf monarchs who threatened Doha with economic ruin in 2017.
In August, Democrats had a chance to at least question Brotherhood ideology, but they did not take it.
Instead, they underscored their apparent loyalty to extremism when all five Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on federal courts boycotted a hearing on the Brotherhood.
“Islamophobia,” one called the hearing. That is the go-to response of Islamists and their sympathizers whenever they are criticized.
Democrats need Mr. El-Sayed to hold their Michigan Senate seat and cannot afford to offend Muslim voters.
In August, Kyle Shideler, director of the Center for Security Policy’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism branch, testified before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on federal courts, oversight, agency action and federal rights about the Muslim Brotherhood.
“In short, the issue of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood was and is not merely a counterterrorism issue, but also a systemic counterintelligence challenge, and even more broadly, a challenge to the fabric of the United States and its ability to seek assimilation and social cohesion,” he said.
Questioned by subcommittee Chairman Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, Mr. Shideler spoke of a partnership between the Brotherhood and the Democratic Socialists of America, a group that Democrats welcome into their “big tent.”
Founded in 1928, the Brotherhood’s relentless goal remains the same, Mr. Shideler said. It uses front groups to infiltrate ruling bodies “in pursuit of its ultimate goal: the overthrow of governments and the reestablishment of a worldwide caliphate operating under Islamic law, known as Shariah.”
Also appearing at the hearing was Lara Burns, a former FBI agent and the head of terrorism research at the George Washington University Program on Extremism. As an agent, she investigated the infamous Holy Land Foundation’s illegal terrorist financing, which brought convictions in 2008.
A key historical document for the Brotherhood, Ms. Burns said, is the 1991 “The Explanatory Memorandum” written by Mohamed Akram, a senior leader in the organization. He wrote of a “grand jihad” to sabotage Western society, so that it is eliminated.
The Holy Land file also included evidence of a secret 1993 Philadelphia meeting of Muslim leaders who actively support Hamas and the Brotherhood. From that conference came the birth of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, which, with the liberal media’s help, matured into the movement’s main political and propaganda voice.
“To that end, from its outset, CAIR pursued a mission of intimidation,” Ms. Burns said. “CAIR aggressively denounced media and law enforcement actions against elements of the U.S.-based Hamas infrastructure, knowingly and falsely labeling those as acts of ’Islamophobia’ and alleging the war on terror was a war on Muslims.”
Back to Mr. El-Sayed’s apparent radicalism. In March, after a Dearborn-area man attacked a synagogue filled with children, the Senate candidate made a video that appeared to rationalize the violence. He said, “Hurt people hurt people.”
In a 2018 Detroit synagogue speech, Mr. El-Sayed said he views terrorist organization Hamas “the same way” as he views the Israel Defense Forces, according to The Washington Free Beacon.
So he equated Israel, which has survived years of deadly Islamist attacks, with Iran, the world’s largest state-sponsor of terrorism.
An online video clip shows Mr. El-Sayed in 2009 preaching to the Muslim Student Association, a group founded with the help of individuals with ties to the Brotherhood.
On “Meet the Press,” Mr. El-Sayed offered a flat “No” when asked whether he or his family had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Later, an NBC anchor confronted him, citing his half sister’s history.
“I have no ties, we have no ties,” Mr. El-Sayed insisted.
The Brotherhood leadership’s focus is on violence.
In a 2024 interview, Tareq Al-Suwaidan, a Brotherhood leader, said that Muslim youths view Hamas’ late military spokesman Abu Ubaida as a “role model,” according to the Middle East Media Research Institute. He also reportedly said that “the highest priority of Islamic law is to preserve the religion, not human life. This is why jihad exists. Israel must be removed.”
As for Ubaida, a propagandist for Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, slaughtering of Jews, Israel killed him on Aug. 30, 2025, in an airstrike.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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