Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D.) joined the Holocaust-denying Shiite cleric Fadhel Al-Sahlani on stage last month to celebrate the grand opening of the Islamic Institute of America’s new mosque. During the event, El-Sayed also offered “hearty congratulations” to the mosque’s imam, Hassan al-Qazwini, an Iraqi-born cleric who has used his perch to praise Hezbollah leaders and spread antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Speaking at a June 6 ceremony, El-Sayed called it an “honor and a privilege” to commemorate the Islamic Institute’s new $16 million mosque in Dearborn Heights, Mich. “This is an incredible masjid,” El-Sayed said of the 67,000-square-foot facility, which features five golden domes and was built in part with $2 million from Iraq’s prime minister.
El-Sayed’s role in the inauguration of the mosque could raise questions for the left-wing Democrat in his high-profile Senate race, which could determine which party controls the upper chamber. El-Sayed has already faced scrutiny for campaigning with Hasan Piker, a Turkish-American influencer who said that “America deserved 9/11” and called Israel much worse than Hamas.
El-Sayed, who used his speech to criticize Israel and “the ongoing genocide that is being perpetrated by our tax dollars,” spoke ahead of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) and Sheikh Fadhel Al-Sahlani, an Iraqi-born cleric who has said the Jewish death toll of six million in the Holocaust “has been exaggerated.” Al-Sahlani has lauded Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, saying in a speech that “our movement” made “great change” in the Arab world and across the globe.
Qazwini, who founded the Islamic Institute in 2015, has made similar remarks over the years.
The cleric, whose father was handpicked by Iran’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to serve in Iran’s judiciary, claimed in a 2015 sermon that “ISIS somehow is connected to Israel” and that “ISIS is playing the role of the Zionist in the Muslim world.” He has also described Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) as an honorable man, “even though he is a Jew.”
Sanders’s campaign denounced Qazwini’s “antisemitic conspiracy theories” and “toxic” rhetoric after he introduced Sanders at a campaign event in Dearborn in 2020.
Last year, Qazwini called for members of Congress who supported the Antisemitism Awareness Act to “be indicted and convicted of treason,” calling them “stooges of Israel,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Qazwini recently applauded Iran in its war against the United States and Israel.
“Iran,” Qazwini said on June 26, “stood firm, stood so firm, and it humiliated the most powerful man on earth.”
In a March 24 sermon, Qazwini prayed in Arabic to Allah to “grant victory to our brothers in Iran” and to “inflict defeat upon Your Zionist enemies,” according to an English translation of his sermon.
Qazwini has held memorial services for Hezbollah fighters, and praised the terrorist group’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
In a February 2025 sermon, Qazwini praised Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in September 2024, as a hero of the “resistance,” saying his death would become “fuel to sustain the resistance against Israel.”
“Victory belongs to the righteous,” Qazwini said. “The oppressors will perish, no matter how long it lasts.”
On March 8, at the Islamic Institute’s previous facility, Qazwini delivered a eulogy for Hezbollah fighters Ibrahim and Kassim Ghazali, who were killed in an Israeli strike in Lebanon. There, Qazwini spoke with their brother, Ayman Ghazali, who attacked a Jewish school in West Bloomfield Township, Mich., four days after the memorial, the New York Times reported.
Qazwini’s views on social issues like homosexuality are also out of sync with El-Sayed’s liberal politics. In 2015, Qazwini called the Supreme Court decision to legalize gay marriage a “sad moment” in America’s history, criticized “the lobbying of homosexual groups,” and called homosexuality “a form of disorder.” He preached against the normalization of homosexuality in a June 22 sermon.
El-Sayed, who offered a “hearty congratulations to Sayed Imam Qazwini” during the mosque’s grand opening, appeared at the facility as he courted voters in Michigan’s large Muslim and Arab community, which is centered in Dearborn and neighboring Dearborn Heights.
El-Sayed has avoided hot-button issues related to Islamic extremism out of concern that it would upset voters in Dearborn, a majority-Muslim city that has been referred to in the Wall Street Journal as “America’s Jihad Capital.” During a March strategy call, El-Sayed told campaign staff he would avoid commenting on the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to avoid alienating voters in Dearborn, according to audio obtained by the Free Beacon.
“There are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad,” El-Sayed said.
In another strategy call after the Ghazali synagogue attack, El-Sayed told supporters that his statement condemning the attack was “a risk,” Punchbowl News reported. El-Sayed condemned the attack but also said that “hurt people hurt people.”
El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
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