Who is Abdel Rahman El Sayed, who is about to become the first Muslim member of the US Senate?
In the US midterm elections, Democrats seized control of Congress for the remainder of Donald Trump's presidential term. But the vote may be historic for other reasons as well. In the state of Michigan, the Democratic Party’s candidate, Abdul Rahman Al-Sayyed, is now expected to become the first Muslim senator in the country’s history.
Al-Sayyid, a doctor who had never held elected office before, was the focus of one of the most polarizing election races. The intensity of the competition increased further in the final days of the election campaign, after his fellow Democrat Haley Stevens, whom he had narrowly defeated to win the party's nomination, announced her support for his Republican rival, Mike Rogers.
On Sunday, November 1, Abdel Sayed responded by telling reporters: “This is a state with a population of 10 million people who deserve a much better performance from their government. And I am much more focused on the 9,999,998 people, who have nothing to do with who you (Stevens and Ruggs) are talking about.”
Announcing victory on Wednesday, November 4, about five hours after polls closed, El-Sayed told his cheering supporters: “They threw their weight into one of the ugliest campaigns we have seen in a long time... because of my name and my religion.”
“They wanted America to be too small to accommodate some of us. We know that this country can accommodate all of us.”
He added, "You gave a chance to a candidate who was most likely to win... Michigan, I can't wait to serve you."
Abdul Rahman was born in 1984 in the Rochester Hills suburb of Detroit. His father and stepmother, Jacqueline Johnson, raised him after his parents divorced when he was three years old. He studied medicine at the University of Michigan and Columbia University, specializing in epidemiology.
After being appointed CEO of the Detroit Health Department in 2015, he became a figure in national headlines. Three years later, he ran for governor of Michigan. He finished second in the Democratic primary, but lost by more than 20 percentage points to Gretchen Whitmer, who later went on to win two terms as governor.
Whitmer supported Stevens' candidacy in the primary for the 2026 Senate race, but publicly endorsed El-Sayed's campaign after he won the nomination.
Al-Sayed received the support of progressive figures such as Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But more moderate Democrats, including former US President Barack Obama, also lent their support to his campaign, as winning the Michigan race was key to the party's plans to control the US Senate.
Al-Sayyed campaigned on a left-wing platform, in which his criticism of US military aid to Israel was prominent, along with issues such as taxing billionaires to fund universal health care.
“It shouldn't be that hard to pay your taxes and know that that money is going to be spent on you and your children, instead of spending it dropping bombs on other people and their children,” El-Sayed told his supporters during a campaign rally on Thursday, October 29.
He also described the Israeli war in Gaza, after the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, as genocide, an accusation that Israel strongly rejects, and said that Israel practices an apartheid regime in the occupied West Bank.
His opposition to military aid was not limited to Israel, as Al-Sayed, 42, repeatedly said that he wanted American tax revenues to be used “to build schools and provide opportunities, instead of sending them abroad to drop bombs on anyone.”
“I don’t think we should fund foreign armies in general,” Al-Sayed said on Wednesday, October 28. “This applies to Israel, as well as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.”
However, US President Donald Trump accused Abdel-Rahman El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants, of "siding with terrorists."
Vice President J.D. Vance said during a campaign rally in support of Rogers on October 15:
“You deserve better than this little dodger, who should shut up and show some gratitude to the country that gave him everything.”
But Rogers, while distancing himself from Trump's statements, accused Al-Sayed's campaign of receiving financial support from donors linked to extremist organizations.
Republicans also accused El-Sayed of having links to the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest and oldest political Islamist organization, which briefly held power in the country after the 2011 Arab Spring protests. While he denied any links to it, his rivals pointed to his signing of an open letter in 2012 urging the Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, to "purge the media and the police as quickly as possible."
Al-Sayed has also been criticized for his relationship with left-wing commentator Hassan Peker, who said the United States "deserved" the September 11 attacks. Last August, Al-Sayed apologized to the Jewish community in Michigan for comments about the motives behind a violent attack carried out by an Arab American on a synagogue in Detroit.
The Jewish Insider news platform considered that his candidacy led to a split in the votes of Jewish voters in Michigan, who historically vote for Democrats.
