Abdul El-Sayed has quietly embraced the nakedly antisemitic Nation of Islam during his Senate campaign, meeting with two lieutenants of the group’s leader, Louis Farrakhan, who themselves have railed against “the Jews,” the Washington Free Beacon found.
Benton Harbor mayor Marcus Muhammad, a “student minister” in the Nation of Islam, posted a photo arm-in-arm with a much shorter El-Sayed backstage at the Democrat’s election night watch party on August 4. And Troy Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam’s Detroit chapter, posted a photo from a Detroit NAACP event in June 2025, sporting the group’s distinctive bowtie and towering over El-Sayed as they locked into a solidarity handshake.
The pint-sized progressive’s interactions with the Farrakhan personnel, which have not been previously reported, surface as he faces growing skepticism from moderate Democrats and Jewish groups over his links to openly extremist groups and individuals. El-Sayed has rejected calls to disassociate from Hasan Piker, a left-wing influencer who said “America deserved 9/11,” saying he hopes to make the Democratic Party a “big tent” coalition.
His fundamentalist religious beliefs are also in the spotlight after the Free Beacon revealed his personal vow to live by Sharia law until the day he dies.
It is unlikely that moderate Democrats will welcome Farrakhan’s friends into El-Sayed’s aspirational “big tent” thanks to Farrakhan’s long record of antisemitic statements. Farrakhan has demonized Jews for decades and called Adolf Hitler a “great man.” The 93-year-old preacher has compared Jews to “termites” and called Judaism a “gutter religion.”
The two Muhammads with whom El-Sayed fraternized are well known across Michigan for their Nation affiliations and are loyal disciples of Farrakhan who echo his antisemitic rhetoric.
In a March 13, 2018, video unearthed by the Free Beacon, Troy Muhammad issued overt threats of violence against Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for denouncing Farrakhan over a speech in which the minister had said that “the powerful Jews are my enemy” and that Jews are “Satanic.”
“Those like the Jews who, like Goliath, they think that they’re big, but Farrakhan will bring them down,” Muhammad said in the video message, recorded at Detroit’s Muhammad Mosque #1.
“Behind me is [sic] soldiers you see and some that you don’t see. And you might not see it until it’s too late, if you keep playing with the minister,” Muhammad, who joined the Nation of Islam while in prison on attempted murder charges, went on.
“So all of you who represent Satan, the ADL, and all your Negro imps … get off the track before you get ran over by a train,” said Muhammad, surrounded by roughly 40 Nation of Islam members.
Marcus Muhammad, who was elected mayor of Benton Harbor in 2015, has also defended Farrakhan, often with antisemitic tropes.
After Farrakhan referred to Jews collectively as “the Satan” in a July 2020 speech and accused them of having “broken their relationship covenant with God,” Marcus Muhammad posted a photo of Farrakhan with the caption “Yet for fear of the Jews no one spoke openly of him.”
The following year, responding to another criticism of Farrakhan, Muhammad invoked the Holocaust-era Nazi pogrom against Jews, writing of “the ongoing Jewish and Gentile Kristallnacht against Black Muslim businesses.”
Muhammad, who posted photos with El-Sayed in February 2018 and July 2018, last week promoted a video of Farrakhan discussing The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews Vol. 2, a pseudoscientific Nation of Islam treatise that claims Jews controlled the transatlantic slave trade.
Muhammad has sought Farrakhan’s advice on matters related to Israel. In 2019, he said Farrakhan advised him to reject an invitation to visit Israel as part of a “peace mission” due to “the great dangers and hatred that exist.” He wrote that he declined the visit because of Israel’s “vitriolic disposition toward Muslims.”
Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam have caused political problems for other Democrats. In 2006, Democrat Keith Ellison, now Michigan’s attorney general, renounced his ties to the Nation of Islam and support for Farrakhan before running for Congress. Then-senator Barack Obama met with Farrakhan in 2005, a long-rumored encounter that was not verified until Nation member Askia Muhammad released a photo of the confab in 2018. Muhammad said he withheld the picture out of fear that it would hurt Obama politically.
There have been no reports of El-Sayed meeting Farrakhan himself, though some of El-Sayed’s closest political allies have met with the minister. In February 2024, Farrakhan met with Wayne County, Mich., officials Sam Baydoun, Warren Evans, and Assad Turfe, all of whom El-Sayed touts on his campaign endorsements page. Dearborn school board member Amer Zahr, a close friend of El-Sayed who headlined a series of luxury cruise fundraisers with him in 2019, is seen clasping Farrakhan’s hand in the photograph.
The Nation of Islam has not formally endorsed El-Sayed, but Marcus Muhammad has indicated he is keen to help El-Sayed’s campaign. Muhammad in a radio interview last week urged black voters to “get out and support” El-Sayed in the general election.
“I believe that what he represents, it represents a new day,” said Muhammad, who referred to El-Sayed as “brother” and said he has visited El-Sayed’s Detroit campaign headquarters.
El-Sayed—who has been struggling badly to attract Detroit black voters he needs to win the general election—has quietly courted them in other controversial ways.
El-Sayed’s campaign paid Detroit pastor Horace Sheffield’s nonprofit organization $75,000 for “political consulting” since October, the Free Beacon reported. El-Sayed failed to disclose those payments when touting Sheffield’s endorsement, and Sheffield also did not disclose the payments in multiple friendly interviews he conducted with El-Sayed.
The El-Sayed campaign did not respond to questions about the candidate’s relationship with the Muhammads and the Nation of Islam, or whether he has ever met Farrakhan.
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