Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed seldom brings up his birth mother while campaigning — and newly surfaced records help explain why.
According to a report by the Midwesterner, his birth mother, Fatten Fathy Elkomy, worked from 1999 until at least 2004 for the Islamic American Relief Agency, also known as the Islamic African Relief Agency, an organization later designated as a terrorist group.
In 2004, the US Treasury Department named the group a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization, saying its international network had provided financial support to Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Treasury officials also alleged that the IARA had directed support to Hamas and other terrorist organizations as recently as 2003.
Federal court filings show Elkomy’s name appeared multiple times in evidence presented during the government’s case against IARA.
Those records cite Elkomy 14 times, describing her involvement in eight wire transfers and five recorded phone calls between 1999 and 2002. One exhibit included an IARA-USA transfer-request form seeking $24,607.34 for the organization’s Iraq office.
Elkomy was not charged with any crime, was not listed as a co-conspirator and was never accused of terrorism-related offenses.
Her brother, Mohamed — also spelled Mohammed — Elkomy, who is El-Sayed’s uncle, was also referenced in 19 exhibits involving calls among donors, IARA officials and other individuals.
Federal court records mention Abdul El-Sayed’s mother, Fatten Fathy Elkomy, 14 times, and show an IARA-USA transfer-request form for $24,607.34 to its Iraq office
El-Sayed and his step-mother Jacqueline El-Sayed, who he refers to as his ‘mother’ is frequently talked about on his campaign
El-Sayed’s half sister Eman Abdelhadi has become a prominent pro-Palestinian activist and has described Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as genocide — a characterization El-Sayed has also used
The Islamic American Relief Agency was a US-based Islamic charitable organization founded in 1985 in Columbia, Missouri.
Its stated humanitarian mission was to raise money in the United States for people affected by poverty, famine, disasters and conflict, particularly in Africa and Sudan.
In March 2007, the Department of Justice charged IARA-USA with a 33-count indictment alleging that it had illegally transferred funds to Iraq in violation of federal sanctions.
A superseding indictment followed in January 2008.
In 2010, two members of IARA’s board pleaded guilty to conspiring to transfer more than $1 million to Iraq in violation of U.S. sanctions.
Evidence introduced in United States v. IARA included hundreds of exhibits documenting phone calls, faxes, wire transfers, tax forms, emails, bank statements and other records.
IARA-USA ultimately pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions and agreed to dissolve.
In a July 2016 announcement, the US Attorney’s Office explained that because IARA had been designated a specially designated global terrorist organization and its assets had been blocked, the organization did not have funds available to pay the fine.
Elkomy publicly rejected allegations that IARA was connected to terrorists.
In comments to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2004, she said she had been working for the organization to help vulnerable children.
‘I’ve been working there serving orphans and children with at least one deceased parent, and it breaks my heart they’re not going to get any help,’ she said.
There is no evidence in the criminal case that Elkomy herself was charged with terrorism or any other crime.
She continues to live in Missouri, where she has worked in mental-health care and at the Islamic School of Columbia.
Despite rarely discussing his birth mother on the campaign trail, El-Sayed has used her professional background when making the case for his health-care policies.
During a campaign stop in Lansing last year, El-Sayed discussed his concerns about people losing health insurance, particularly those with serious mental-health conditions.
‘So the answer is that people have the same insurance over the course of their lives that does not depend on them being employed, or them meeting a particular income threshold, which is, of course, Medicare for All,’ he said.
‘I say this as my mother is a psychiatric NP and my wife is a psychiatrist,’ El-Sayed added.
But he’s featured his stepmother Jacqueline El-Sayed, who married his father Mohamed El-Sayed, not long after he immigrated to the United States in the early 1980s with Fatten Fathy Elkomy.
During a 2017 speech before the Islamic Foundation, El-Sayed explained that his birth mother later remarried a man who worked as a translator in the Middle East and moved back there.
El-Sayed’s family connections have drawn additional attention because of his maternal half-sister, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi.
Abdelhadi has become a prominent pro-Palestinian activist and has described Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as genocide — a characterization El-Sayed has also used.
According to the New York Post, old social-media posts have also resurfaced in which Abdelhadi criticized US holiday traditions, including July 4 and Thanksgiving.
Abdelhadi was also arrested in 2025 following a protest outside an immigration detention facility near Chicago. She faced allegations including aggravated battery and resisting or obstructing an officer, according to the Post.
Elkomy was featured in his sister’s documentary ‘Coming Around.’
According to the documentary’s website, ‘Coming Around follows 28-year-old second-generation Palestinian-Egyptian Brooklynite Eman as she weighs the decision to come out to her devout Muslim mother.’
El-Sayed’s campaign issued this statement about his stance on his sister’s politics.
‘Abdul loves his sister and also disagrees with her on a number of political positions and the rhetoric she’s chosen to use, including on foreign policy.’
El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on his mother’s involvement in the Islamic American Relief Agency.
