by Ashe Short
The ties that bind: El-Sayed’s own half-sister has publicly and repeatedly described family ties to branches of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has widely been designated as a terrorist group. His flat-out denial leaves Michigan voters to weigh his word against hers as they choose a senator who would be privy to classified material and vote on national security issues.
Michigan's Democratic candidate for the Senate, Abdul El-Sayed, continues to face questions about his family’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which has global chapters designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government.
The group has also been variously designated as terroristic by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Russia and Syria, according to PBS.
Recently unearthed X posts from El-Sayed’s half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, reveal family connections to the organization, particularly its Egyptian chapter, which is a U.S.-designated specially designated global terrorist organization by the U.S. Treasury Department for material support to Hamas, another terrorist organization.
In June 2012, Abdelhadi wrote on X: “Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college #respect.”
The Washington Free Beacon described the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood that El-Sayed's mother belonged to as "one of the most violent branches in the sprawling Islamist network."
“My family has long been MB," she posted, and declines to weed them from her internet footprint
In another post from that same day, Abdelhadi, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, wrote: Although I lean towards the Leftists; conversations with my #MB family in Egypt revealed respect for individual liberties & secular state.”
“My family has long been MB, but I've always felt that it has navigated the political sphere poorly/destructively,” she said in a third post that day.
She has not deleted any of the posts, even after El-Sayed began getting asked about them during his campaign.
El-Sayed and Abdelhadi have the same mother, Fatten Elkomy, who attended Alexandria University in Egypt and was the site of Muslim Brotherhood activity in the 1970s.
Calling it "hearsay evidence" El-Sayed says "It's just not serious."
El-Sayed has denied any connection to the Muslim Brotherhood, telling NBC’s “Meet the Press” that his family was not tied to the terrorist organization. When “NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Llamas pressed him on the issue, El-Sayed said: “I have no ties. We have no ties,” according to The New York Post.
“I have never had these conversations with my mother. I wasn’t raised by my mother,” he added. “You’re using hearsay evidence from a tweet. It’s not serious. It’s just not serious.”
El-Sayed was born in Michigan and raised by his father and stepmother after his parents divorced when he was young. His mother worked as a nurse practitioner in Missouri.
In 2013, El-Sayed’s half-sister also posted several tweets about family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, including one in which she said she was, “Praying for all my family that supports the #MB in #Egypt. Lie low, stay safe.”
Her comments came during the Egyptian military uprising that overthrew then-President Mohamed Morsi, who was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
She followed up that post by saying: “I don’t support the #MB, but I have had family jailed for being a part of it. They feel extremely betrayed right now.”
She also posted a few days later: “My conversations with #MB family in #Egypt have one unifying tone: it’s not over.”
If El-Sayed is elected to Congress, he would get a security clearance by the nature of his position, meaning any potential ties to a terrorist organization may be overlooked.
Ashe Short
Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/abdul-el-sayed-cant-outrun-muslim-brotherhood-questions-final-stretch
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