The truth behind Abdul El-Sayed’s family’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood as clash goes viral in razor-thin Senate race

DAILYMAIL.COM • 2h ago

By SAMANTHA LOREN, US POLITICAL REPORTER 16:26 19 Oct 2026, updated 16:39 19 Oct 2026

A heated exchange between Democratic Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed and a Republican operative at a campaign town hall has reignited a debate over his alleged family connections to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The exchange happened when Tommy Teepell, a former staffer for Senator Josh Hawley, asked whether El-Sayed would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood.

El-Sayed immediately replied, ‘Sure. Yeah, absolutely,’ overriding Tommy, launching into a lengthy response, implying Tommy was only accusing him of connections to the group due to his Muslim faith.

At one point, El-Sayed compared his situation to that of President JFK, the first Catholic president of the United States.

El-Sayed drew a parallel with his own candidacy, saying he wasn’t running to be a Muslim senator but to serve in the US Senate as someone who happened to be Muslim.

‘I think it’s you who needs to understand the Constitution, not me,’ El-Sayed told him.

The exchange quickly became a flashpoint in the race, with CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford siding with Tommy in a now-deleted post on X.

‘Tommy, thank you. I had to watch this twice to catch Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s nanosecond ‘yeah absolutely’ response,’ Crawford wrote.

‘His subsequent uninterrupted three-minute diatribe proving your exact point is the kind of spectacular self-own most people only dream about triggering. Congrats.’

Crawford deleted her post after backlash and later apologized, acknowledging it violated CBS News standards. Some speculated her message looked like an attempted direct message to Teepell.

Later it emerged the CBS head Bari Weiss had personally pushed reporters to dig into El-Sayed’s background.

The viral clash, which has now amassed over 13 million views X, has also revived scrutiny of old social media posts by El-Sayed’s half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, about alleged historical connections between their family and the Muslim Brotherhood.

In posts dating back to 2012 and 2013, Abdelhadi discussed relatives in Egypt who supported the organization and described their mother’s alleged activism while she was a college student in the early 1970s.

In 2012, she wrote, ‘My family has long been MB,’ an abbreviation for the Muslim Brotherhood.

In a second post that day, she referred to their mother’s ‘activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college.’

In 2013, Abdelhadi wrote that she did not support the organization but had relatives who had been jailed over their membership.

El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, has seized on his half-sister’s resurfaced posts, making the alleged Muslim Brotherhood connections a central line of attack as he repeatedly questions El-Sayed’s background and national-security views.

Rogers even released a campaign ad highlighting the half-sister’s posts and claimed the Democrat had a history of supporting the organization.

President Trump has also repeatedly claimed El-Sayed is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, calling El-Sayed ‘a Muslim radical … a Muslim Brotherhood member.’

‘All you have to do is look at his past correspondence, and we cannot take a chance on having this guy be in the United States Senate.’

El-Sayed has repeatedly rejected the allegations.

During an interview with NBC News’ Tom Llamas last week, Llamas questioned him about his alleged family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, to which he responded, ‘I have no ties. We have no ties.’

He also said he had never discussed his mother’s alleged activism with her, explaining that he was raised by his father Mohamed and stepmother Jacqueline after his parents divorced when he was three.

El-Sayed was born in Michigan to an Egyptian father and mother.

El-Sayed’s mother, Fatten Elkomy, had worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency, a charity later sanctioned by US authorities over alleged links to terrorist financing.

In October 2004, the Treasury Department designated IARA’s parent network a supporter of terrorism, accusing it of funding Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

The US branch was shut down and the American arm later pleaded guilty to funnelling $1.37 million to Iraq in breach of US sanctions.

Elkomy was not charged with a crime, and no evidence has established that she knew of or participated in the organization’s alleged terrorist financing.

The latest InsiderAdvantage poll of Michigan’s Senate race shows El-Sayed holding a narrow 2.3-point lead over Rogers, with 47.8 percent support to Rogers’ 45.5 percent.

The poll, conducted October 9-10 among 1,200 likely voters, found that 5.4 percent were still undecided.

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