Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed used the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to center his message on the victims, a notable shift after earlier commemorations in which he also mourned Muslim civilians killed in subsequent U.S. military campaigns.
El-Sayed marked the anniversary in a more conventional tone, leading a moment of silence during a Friday campaign event and releasing a 91-second remembrance video condemning the “cruel act of terror” and the “murder of innocent civilians” by terrorists who, he said, “attacked the idea of America.”
“We all remember where we were when the Twin Towers were hit,” El-Sayed said in the video, recalling that he was in a high school chemistry class in suburban Detroit when he watched the second hijacked plane strike the South Tower.
“The scenes of carnage dominated our screens for weeks. They dominate our memories still,” said El-Sayed, a former Columbia University public health professor.
“That cruel act of terror took the lives of more than 3,000 kids, women, men — including brave first responders who ran into the rubble to save lives that day. Thousands more were injured. Many continue to suffer the consequences even today.”
“They didn’t just attack America that day,” El-Sayed continued. “They attacked the idea of America, the notion of a nation brought together by ideals where it doesn’t matter how you pray or if you pray at all, a place where freedom and commitment to justice bind us even if at times we struggle to fully realize it.”
“Today, on 9/11, we honor the lives that were taken from us in a terrible act of terrorism,” he said.
“Nothing can justify the murder of innocent civilians — nothing. And on this day we mourn the victims, their families and the destruction those terrorists caused. They tried to diminish America. They tried to make her smaller. They tried to turn us against each other. They failed.”
“And we honor today the memories of those who were lost by doing what her attackers and detractors could never do by building — we build an America that is bigger, more inclusive, more empowering, more just.”
At a later campaign stop, El-Sayed again paused to recognize the anniversary. “I wanted to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, and in honor of all that we lost, 3,000 folks, including first responders who bravely rushed in, can we just observe a moment of silence?” he told attendees.
The Sept. 11 attacks have taken on unusual significance in Michigan’s Senate race as El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants, campaigns to become the first Muslim U.S. senator. He is running against former Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican foreign policy hawk who once chaired the House Intelligence Committee.
El-Sayed, who previously served as health director for Detroit and Wayne County, has declined to distance himself from close ally and commentator Hasan Piker over Piker’s 2019 comment that “America deserved 9/11,” a remark the far-left streamer later walked back.
He drew negative headlines as the anniversary neared as a since-deleted tweet resurfaced of him marking the 20th anniversary with an attack on the foreign wars launched by the US in the early 2000s.
“Today, I mourn the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC, perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my faith. Tomorrow, I’ll mourn ~1M lives, millions of injuries, & infrastructural devastation in 3 countries, perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my country,” El-Sayed wrote in 2021.
El-Sayed further elaborated on a podcast in 2021 that “9/11 scarred our country in profound ways, but what we did after 9/11 scarred millions of other people.”
The Democrat also took flak for lacking an official 9/11 remembrance on his campaign calendar, which instead listed a stop at Grand Rapids’ Fiesta Mexicana.
At the Republican midterm convention this week, President Trump called El-Sayed an “extremist” and highlighted his family connections.
El-Sayed’s sister “celebrated the terrorist slaughter of babies on October 7th” and his mother “worked for an organization that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to people that follow Osama bin Laden,” the president said.
The candidate’s half-sister, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, lashed out at socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2023 for condemning Hamas’ attack on Israel, writing on X: “What a disappointment. If you can’t stand with a ppl that have been held in an open prison for 16 years finally fighting their oppressors, how can you claim to stand for justice?”
El-Sayed’s mother, Fatten Elkomy, worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency from 1999 to 2004, the year it was designated by the Treasury Department for allegedly “moving funds to the Palestinian territories for use in terrorist activities.” The candidate was raised by his father.
Rogers told The Post earlier this week that El-Sayed “has long separated himself from Team America” and said his opponent would have to do “a full about-face” to be taken seriously.
