Abdul El-Sayed defeated Republican Mike Rogers to become the first Muslim elected to the US Senate, overcoming a campaign marred by Islamophobic attacks, including from President Trump.
WEBDESK – MEDIABITES – AP
Abdul El-Sayed has made history, defeating Republican Mike Rogers to become the first Muslim ever elected to the United States Senate, in a victory that sent shockwaves through American politics and drew an outpouring of emotion from Muslim Americans who have lived under the shadow of anti-Muslim sentiment since the September 11 attacks.
The result, confirmed early Wednesday, came despite a bruising campaign in which El-Sayed was subjected to some of the most intense Islamophobic attacks seen in recent American electoral history. President Donald Trump labeled him a “jihadist” and accused him of being “on the side of the terrorists.” Dozens of Republican members of Congress formed a Sharia-Free America Caucus, depicting Islamic religious law as a threat to the US Constitution.
None of it worked.
At his victory rally in Detroit, El-Sayed announced himself by his full name, a moment that resonated deeply with Muslim Americans across the country.
“My name is Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed,” he declared.
He told the Associated Press the victory was Michigan’s answer to the hatred directed at his community. “They tried to demonize people because of how they pray,” he said. “And Michigan, the whole Michigan, clapped back.”
‘A beautifully American story’
In Dearborn, Michigan’s city with one of the largest Arab American populations in the United States, the reaction was overwhelming pride. Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, who has known El-Sayed for more than a decade, called the moment historic.
“What a beautifully American story,” Hammoud said. “One of our brightest and best earned the support of the majority of Michiganders who participated in yesterday’s election. And regardless of the direction in which he prays, they’re sending him to the US Senate.”
Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called the outcome “a historic turning point for American Muslim political engagement and a historic defeat for the politics of hate.”
“Anti-Muslim extremists, Israel lobby groups and even the president of the United States used every smear in the book to paint Dr. El-Sayed as a Muslim boogeyman,” Awad said. “None of it was true, and none of it worked.”
A victory 25 years in the making
The win comes exactly 25 years after the September 11 attacks reshaped the place of Muslim Americans in public life, subjecting a generation to scrutiny, suspicion and discrimination. For many, El-Sayed’s election represents a reckoning with that legacy.
“Having grown up in a post-9/11 world, being Muslim, being Arab myself, never in a million years did I think we would see what we saw today,” said Yasmin El-Sayed, no relation to the senator-elect, who traveled from New York with her two daughters to attend the Detroit watch party.
Mohamed Gula, CEO of the Muslim American advocacy group Emgage Action, said the moment carried particular weight. “For Abdul to come out last night and use his full name meant the world to someone who grew up in post-9/11 America, where the Muslim American community was seen through a national security lens.”
El-Sayed framed his victory in broader terms. “I didn’t run to be the first Muslim senator. I ran to be the next senator of the state of Michigan who happens to be Muslim,” he said. “But I also know that democracy is constantly about the conversation about who we are, who we want to be.”
The senator-elect’s victory is widely seen as part of a broader shift in American Muslim political representation, following New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s election a year ago, which also sparked a wave of anti-Muslim rhetoric that ultimately failed to prevent his win.
