All In the Family: Meet El-Sayed's Father and His Connections

His father-in-law funded his campaign while sitting on the boards of CAIR and ISNA, both connected to the Muslim Brotherhood and unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation scheme that funded Hamas. His mother helped send money to al-Qaeda and Hamas. His sister declared her pride in the family's connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Abdul El-Sayed refuses to answer questions about any of the above. He won't enjoy the questions about his father either. Jon Levine reports for the Free Beacon that the Senate candidate's father works with an organization that got shut down at one point for its own ties to Islamist terrorism:

Abdul El-Sayed's father sits on the board of a notorious Islamic charity that was once busted for funneling cash to Saddam Hussein and has been raided by the FBI and the U.S. military. The board also features two current members who belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood, according to documents from federal prosecutors.

El-Sayed's father, Michigan academic and imam Dr. Mohammed El-Sayed, serves as a board member of the group Life for Relief and Development, which proudly displays his affiliation on its website.

Speaking of family ...

Abdul El-Sayed's father-in-law, Jukaku Tayeb, previously served on the group's board.

Is that a coincidence? Or is it a pattern? Here's another part of the pattern. LRD got raided by the FBI in 2006, and the Department of Justice indicted its CEO, Khalil Lassemm, a year later after raiding his home, for violating sanctions and money-laundering to Saddam Hussein. The group had to reach a six-figure settlement over those allegations years later, Levine reports, but LRD did business under other names, including a familiar one in the El-Sayed saga:

Among the files seized were all "correspondence, notes, e-mails, facsimiles and other documents and records" related to the Islamic African Relief Agency, court records show.

The Islamic African Relief Agency was a known alias for the same group for which El-Sayed's mother, Fatten Fathy Elkomy, worked. The agency was later shut down after being identified as an al Qaeda-linked terrorist organization.

Coincidence or pattern? The only one missing from this map is El-Sayed's sister.

With just five days left in the midterm cycle, we can't expect any answers from El-Sayed about his All In the Family connections to radical Islamist groups. We can, however, expect plenty of whining about it. Politico reports today that El-Sayed and his allies complain that Donald Trump may have foiled their attempts to skate past these issues with his constant attacks. Politico casts these as "anti-Muslim attacks," of course:

President Donald Trump and Republicans are ratcheting up their efforts to brand Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, a Michigan-born Muslim whose parents emigrated from Egypt, as an “extremist” in the final days of the state’s critical Senate race.

It has sparked concern among some El-Sayed supporters, who fear the deluge of attacks could break through to some undecided voters. It has infuriated some of the president’s one-time Muslim and Arab allies in the state with the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the country, who view the comments as Islamophobic and racist. And it has caused some of them to lose hope in Republicans.

“You turned off a lot of people. Even people that were working to get Trump elected and get people to vote Republican here have flipped. We did all this work for them to turn around and use us as enemies, to be able just to win an election,” said Hassan Nehme, a GOP statehouse candidate and former Michigan Republican Party vice chair who helped lead Arab American outreach for the GOP in 2024. He is undecided in how he’ll vote in this year’s Senate race. “It’s to the point [where] I’m like, why am I even fighting to be in this party?”

Suuuuuuure. Let's remember that the GOP also nominated Mehmet Oz for the Senate two years ago in Pennsylvania – the first Muslim nominated by either party for the Senate – and Trump appointed him to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in this administration. Zuhdi Jasser ran for the GOP nomination in a House race in Arizona in 2024, too. The differences between El-Sayed and Oz and Jasser are (a) the latter two never wrote a letter backing the Muslim Brotherhood in a purge, (b) their families didn't have connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, and (c) Oz and Jasser know the threat difference between Iran and Israel. Among other differences, of course. 

Politico and El-Sayed want the narrative to remain firmly in the "Republicans pounce™" lane, rather than "Democrats nominated a radical Islamist for the U.S. Senate" truth. At least Jon Levine, Chuck Ross, and Alana Goodman know how to report news at the Free Beacon. Politico ought to try it, if only as a novel change of pace from their usual editorial pandering to the Left. 

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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