Rabia Iclal Turan
12 August 2026•Update: 12 August 2026
Anti-Muslim hate speech targeting Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed surged twentyfold following his Aug. 4 win in the Democratic primary, according to a new study.
Findings of the Washington, DC-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate, as shared with Anadolu, found that posts naming El-Sayed along with anti-Muslim bigotry averaged 155 a day between June 1 and Aug. 3, then rose to 3,099 a day on Aug. 4-10, soaring 1,895%.
Those seven days accounted for 56.7% of all 38,280 Islamophobic posts targeting El-Sayed tracked since Jan. 1, with volume peaking on Aug. 5 at 6,923 posts in a single day.
Separately, the center tracked 409,640 posts promoting anti-Muslim bigotry on US social media company X in the country between June 1 and Aug. 10, with the platform's highest single-day total of the summer also seen on Aug. 5 with 11,883 posts.
The largest theme in the surge, the center said, involved posts describing El-Sayed as "an Islamic jihadist" and falsely linking him to Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Other posts claimed he intended to impose “Islamic law,” recast campaign donations from Muslim groups as “terrorist financing,” or combined anti-Muslim conspiracy theories of a so-called "Islamist and communist" taking over the Democratic Party.
Some posts invoked the 2001 terrorist attacks to frame El-Sayed as foreign and hostile to the US, while others called for "remigration," meaning the mass removal of Muslims from Western countries.
The center said the pattern closely mirrored rhetoric it documented during Zohran Mamdani's successful run in last year's New York City mayoral election, pointing to a “stable repertoire” of tropes activated when a Muslim candidate becomes competitive or wins office.
Self-described ‘capitalist who understands how capitalism works’
El-Sayed, a progressive former public health official, narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens in last week’s primary in a blow to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which spent more than $30 million backing Stevens.
He will face Republican Mike Rogers in November for the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Gary Peters, in a contest seen as pivotal to Democrats' hopes of retaking the Senate.
His campaign has centered on affordability, Medicare for All, and getting money out of politics. El-Sayed has also called for ending unconditional US military aid to Israel and other countries.
“I want to get money out of politics, put money in your pocket, and pass Medicare for all," he recently told CNN, dismissing President Donald Trump's attacks on him as a distraction from the country's economic problems.
Trump has called El-Sayed "full of sh-t," a "Radical Left Socialist" and a "Communist," saying that he "hates Jews and Israel."
Attacking corporate monopolies, El-Sayed said in a debate last month: “I'm not a socialist. I'm just a capitalist who understands how capitalism works.”
Vice President JD Vance also sarcastically referred to El-Sayed as "President Abdul El-Sayed" during a White House roundtable last week.
Asked during an interview with Democracy Now!, a US-based independent news program, what it would mean to become the first Muslim senator in US history, El-Sayed said: “I don’t think that much about being the first of anything. I just want to be a really great senator for my state.”
“But I do think about what it would mean about what our country is. You got people like Donald Trump and JD Vance and Mike Rogers, who want to define America as being smaller than she really is. I know America is big. It’s open-hearted. It is thoughtful,” he added.
