By golly, this is starting to look like a pattern, no? First, we have Hasan Piker using his Islamist messaging while acting as a campaign surrogate for Abdul El-Sayed's Senate campaign in Michigan's Democrat primaries. Next, we discover El-Sayed's support for Imam Abdelhamid Algizawi, whose sermons praising terrorists such as Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh led El-Sayed to scrub Algizawi from his YouTube channel.
Two times may be a coincidence. Three, however, is a pattern, and the Free Beacon's Chuck Ross has discovered yet another El-Sayed campaign surrogate who voices support for radical Islamists, this one originally from the regime in Iran. El-Sayed has appeared repeatedly with Dearborn imam Mohammad Ali Elahi, including at public events that raised money for his Senate campaign against Republican Mike Rogers. And who is Elahi? A former functionary in the Iran regime's navy, an Islamist commissar to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and yet another connection to organizers for radical Islamists around the world:
Abdul El-Sayed has quietly campaigned three times this year with a Michigan-based cleric who served as an Iranian Navy propaganda apparatchik in the 1980s and as a high-ranking official at Iran's Martyrs Foundation, now sanctioned by the U.S. government for funneling money to Hezbollah and paying stipends to the families of suicide bombers.
Mohammad Ali Elahi, the imam of the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights, hosted El-Sayed at a campaign event at his mosque on June 24, organized an anti-Israel "interfaith" roundtable for El-Sayed on July 21, and attended a Dearborn fundraiser last month that raised $350,000 for the far-left Democrat's Senate bid.
While Elahi has been effusive in his support for El-Sayed—praising him as "a person of wisdom" in the same Facebook post where he pointed out that "Netanyahu's son lives comfortably in Miami," El-Sayed kept largely quiet about the relationship, which goes back several years. El-Sayed also campaigned at Elahi's mosque during his 2018 campaign.
Elahi, who claimed after 9/11 that "Mossad and Israel … perpetrated" the terrorist attacks, served as head of the Iranian Navy's "political-ideological office," a post to which he was appointed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian supreme leader who coined the epithet that America is "the Great Satan." Elahi, who was photographed with Khomeini in the 1980s, said in a 2017 interview that his job was to "reintroduce" Iranian officers to Islamic values after they had become "westernized" prior to the Islamic revolution of 1979.
Getting the endorsement of a Khomeini acolyte might help El-Sayed in Dearborn. It seems very doubtful that it would help him anywhere else in Michigan, once voters find out about it. And El-Sayed appears determined to keep voters from learning about the company he keeps. It's too late to distance himself from his campaign wingman Hasan Piker, but Chuck Ross reports on how El-Sayed has worked to keep his Islamist support on the down-low outside of Dearborn:
While El-Sayed prominently displays endorsements from Sheffield and other Christian leaders, he has not acknowledged endorsements he's received from Elahi and other imams. Abdelhamid Algizawi, the longtime imam to El-Sayed in his hometown Ann Arbor, has endorsed El-Sayed. He's also hailed slain Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh as a "heroic martyr." Hassan Qazwini, the imam of the Islamic Institute of America in Dearborn Heights, urged congregants in August to vote for El-Sayed in order to "deal the Zionist a blow." El-Sayed headlined the June 6 grand opening of Qazwini's mosque and offered "hearty congratulations" to the imam. In a sermon weeks later, Qazwini preached that Iran "stood firm" against the United States "and it humiliated the most powerful man on earth," according to a video that Qazwini has since deleted.
Thus far, the strategy appears to be successful ... if you trust the polling. He currently leads Rogers on the RCP aggregate average, 47.8/44.2, and has led every poll in the last month with the single exception of a tie from Co/Efficient. However, El-Sayed led the Democrat primary polls by double digits – all of them – in the weeks leading up to his near-loss to Haley Stevens, eventually besting her by a single point.
His strategy has also succeeded because Michigan's Protection Racket Media outlets have mostly avoided reporting on the company El-Sayed keeps. A search this afternoon across news sources for "El-Sayed Elahi" turned up four hits, only two of which are US-based: the Free Beacon report itself and commentary at our sister site Townhall. If Mike Rogers played footsie with 'far-right' influencers, would the Detroit Free Press fail to report it? Why is this reporting only accomplished by the Washington-based Free Beacon, while Michigan media outlets fail to note the influence of a Khomeini acolyte on a major-party nominee to the U.S. Senate?
Hopefully, Rogers and the GOP will use their advertising campaigns to shed light on these connections. The company that El-Sayed keeps is bad for America and for our national security, and Michigan voters deserve to know the nature of El-Sayed's allies.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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