Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed on Saturday disavowed the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist political movement, during a heated exchange at a town hall.
El-Sayed, who could make history as the first Muslim elected to the Senate, has frequently faced Republican accusations that he is sympathetic to interests connected to Islamic terror. In recent days, Republicans including his GOP challenger, Mike Rogers, and President Donald Trump have commented about potential connections to the organization.
An attendee at a town hall in Caro, Michigan, repeatedly pressed El-Sayed about the Muslim Brotherhood, saying he had yet to hear the candidate reject the organization.
“Abdul, will you disavow the Muslim Brotherhood?” the man shouted from the crowd.
El-Sayed, after disavowing the movement, blasted the man for implicitly assuming his “dual loyalty.”
“You assume … that because I am Muslim, that somehow I would have some allegiance to something that is not our Constitution,” El-Sayed said. He later added, “For me, that Constitution is the guiding light.”
The audience member walked out after the exchange as the crowd cheered for El-Sayed.
The nominee has faced questions about potential connections to the organization. The latest attacks came after old tweets from El-Sayed’s half-sister resurfaced online, including a post from 2012 in which she described having “an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college.”
Earlier this week, El-Sayed denied allegations that he or his family has ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, telling reporters that to think that anybody in his family was part of the organization was “an insane thing to assume.”
El-Sayed has said he does not know what his mother was doing in Egypt during the 1970s, explaining he was 3 when his parents divorced and didn’t see his mother for years after being raised by his father and stepmother.
“They want to talk about me or point to my mom or my sister,” El-Sayed said on Thursday, adding, “I’m running for office. Judge me by my actions and my work.”
The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist movement with global offshoots that once wielded significant political power in Egypt, where it was founded. The movement officially rejects the use of violent means to secure its goals. However, offshoots of the group have been linked to attacks in the past.
Trump signed an executive order in November that initiated a process by which certain chapters or other subdivisions of the Muslim Brotherhood could be considered for designation as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
El-Sayed has suggested that questions about supposed ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are rooted in bigotry.
“To insinuate that somehow, because of my Muslim faith, as somebody who might be the first senator who has that faith, that I would have anything but allegiance to the Constitution, that should be called into question,” El-Sayed said Sunday on MSNOW.
CNN’s Gloria Pazmino contributed to this report.
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