Michigan Senatorial Candidate Claims Egyptian Citizenship in Unearthed Video
Abdul El-Sayed, running for U.S. Senate, claimed Egyptian citizenship in a 2016 video, sparking controversy.
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Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed once claimed to hold Egyptian citizenship, newly unearthed video shows. The footage, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, reveals El-Sayed made the claim in 2016 during a speech at the GlobeMed conference in Detroit. His campaign previously maintained that El-Sayed has never been a dual citizen despite listing Egyptian citizenship on his resume.
Claim of Dual Citizenship
“I carry dual citizenship, and I grew up spending most of my summers in another country where I understood what it meant not to have the right to self-govern,” El-Sayed said in the video. The statement was made while he led Detroit’s health department. His campaign has since clarified that the claim was a mistake, citing a misunderstanding about his grandfather’s citizenship status.
Background and Clarifications
El-Sayed’s parents immigrated to the United States from Egypt, and he was born in Rochester Hills, Michigan. Shortly after becoming a professor at Columbia University in 2014, he listed both American and Egyptian citizenship on his resume. His campaign spokeswoman, Roxie Richner, stated that the listing was a mistake and that El-Sayed was “unable to find any documentation to verify this claim” later in life.
Political Context
El-Sayed, running against Republican Mike Rogers, is seeking to be the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate. In 2009, he told The New York Times that he had pledged to live his life in compliance with Sharia law, stating, “Ultimately, the question is, when I die and I stand before God and go through everything I did in my life, I don’t want to say I did it the easy way instead of the Shariah-compliant way.”
Historical Ties to Islam
El-Sayed has a history of attempting to obscure his Islamic links. He once asked a documentary film crew to avoid filming a bookshelf that included multiple Qurans and a book written by an Islamic scholar linked to the 1993 World Trade Center terrorist attack. “You’re going to want to not get these things in the shot … we’re trying to keep the shot secular,” he said.
Source: Daily Wire
