By Alain Renault
The word “brotherhood” evokes charity and fellowship. The Muslim Brotherhood does not. Founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, the group’s explicit creed has long been: “Allah is our objective, the Prophet is our leader, the Quran is our law, jihad is our way, and dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” Its long-term project has been the restoration of a caliphate governed by Sharia, and its Palestinian offshoot is Hamas. Multiple Muslim-majority governments (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others) have designated it a terrorist organization because of its history of violence, political subversion, and support for groups that attack civilians. The Trump administration has designated several of its national chapters (Egyptian, Jordanian, Lebanese, and Sudanese) as terrorist entities or Specially Designated Global Terrorists for material support to Hamas or direct involvement in violence.
A recent Washington Times column argues that Democrats’ apparent coziness with this ideology and its U.S. networks should scare voters. The evidence behind that claim centers on the Michigan Senate race and a broader pattern of institutional tolerance. Michigan Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed is a physician and progressive running against Republican Mike Rogers in a tight contest. He has denied personal or family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet his half-sister, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, posted in 2012–2013 that “My family has long been MB,” that their mother engaged in Muslim Brotherhood activism in Egypt in the early 1970s while in college, and that family members had been jailed for membership. El-Sayed’s father-in-law, Tayeb Jukaku, has held leadership roles with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Michigan chapter and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) founders committee—organizations named as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing case, in which defendants were convicted of funneling millions to Hamas. El-Sayed’s campaign has received donations from numerous individuals associated with CAIR. He has also campaigned with streamer Hasan Piker, who has said “America deserved 9/11,” and has made statements equating Hamas with the Israel Defense Forces while appearing to rationalize violence after a synagogue attack (“Hurt people hurt people”). On *Meet the Press*, he flatly denied family ties; when later confronted with the half-sister’s posts, he dismissed the relevance of 1970s Egyptian history.
These are not isolated associations. In August 2026, Sen. Ted Cruz chaired a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing titled “Hidden in Plain Sight: Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood Network in America.” Witnesses included former FBI agent Lara Burns (who worked the Holy Land Foundation case) and counterterrorism analyst Kyle Shideler. They discussed the 1991 “Explanatory Memorandum” by senior Muslim Brotherhood operative Mohamed Akram, recovered by the FBI and entered into evidence in the Holy Land trial. The memo describes the Brotherhood’s work in North America as a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” whose purpose is “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” It lists organizations including precursors to CAIR and ISNA as part of the network. Shideler also noted partnerships between Brotherhood-linked groups and the Democratic Socialists of America around shared opposition to American constitutional order, Israel, and Western norms. All five Democratic members of the subcommittee boycotted the hearing, labeling it Islamophobia. Cruz was the only senator present.
Democrats need Michigan’s large Muslim electorate—concentrated in places like Dearborn and Hamtramck, the first U.S. city with a Muslim-majority city council—and appear unwilling to risk alienating it by scrutinizing these networks. The standard response to documented connections, the 1991 memorandum, the Holy Land convictions, and chapters designated for supporting Hamas has been to cry Islamophobia and change the subject. This is not ordinary religious outreach or immigrant assimilation. Ordinary Muslim Americans are not the issue; the issue is a transnational Islamist movement whose own documents and offshoots treat democratic societies as targets for gradual subversion or outright replacement under Sharia, and whose Palestinian branch carried out the October 7, 2023 massacre.
Voters can evaluate the strength of specific personal claims about El-Sayed—he denies them, and some fact-checks find no evidence of his personal membership or formal pledge—while still recognizing the broader pattern. Family associations, organizational leadership roles, campaign donations, public statements that equate a designated terrorist group with a U.S. ally, alliances with those who celebrate 9/11, and a party-wide refusal to even attend a hearing on the subject form a coherent picture. The Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology is not compatible with liberal democracy, equal rights for non-Muslims and women, or the American constitutional order. A major party’s apparent comfort with its U.S. networks, documented history, and stated goals is a legitimate reason for voters to be concerned.
