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El-Sayed’s ISNA appearance draws scrutiny over controversial speakers
By Rachel Wolf
Published September 12, 2026
Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is facing questions about his appearance at an Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) convention after the organization removed a Pakistani cleric from its lineup following scrutiny of his past remarks about Hitler, Jews and jihad.
Mufti Tariq Masood had been scheduled to speak at ISNA's annual convention last week in Detroit alongside El-Sayed. The Washington Free Beacon first reported that ISNA had quietly pulled Masood from its list of speakers last month. This came after his past comments, including remarks appearing to praise Hitler's persecution of the Jews and defending child marriage, sparked backlash against ISNA.
Dr. Andrew Bostom, who reviewed one of Masood's sermons, told Fox News Digital that the cleric "basically said that the Quran had foreshadowed Hitler 1,400 years ago."
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Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed faced questions about his participation in a conference featuring controversial speakers. (Jose Juarez/AP Photo)
Bostom said that Masood's remarks should not be looked at in isolation, but rather within a larger pattern of antisemitic themes that have appeared in writings of some Muslim scholars. He cited Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy, the late Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in Egypt, who he said was "the near papal equivalent for Sunni Islam," in terms of his influence.
The controversy over Masood prompted the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) to ask Secretary of State Marco Rubio to deny or review any visa issued to the cleric.
"Masood is a racist, Jew-hate-mongering, anti-American, anti-British, conspiracy-promoting, murder- and terror-inciter. Masood even praises Hitler’s genocide of Jews as doing the right thing, similar to the Quran’s instructions," ZOA National President Morton Klein wrote in his Aug. 19 letter to Rubio.
At the time, Bostom said it was unclear whether Masood had already entered the U.S. or still planned to attend the convention, even if he had been removed from the list of speakers.
Abdul El-Sayed's campaign running a booth at the Islamic Society of North America's annual conference. ((Robert Schmad/Fox News Digital))
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While Masood ultimately did not speak at the convention, his removal from the lineup did not resolve questions about the event's speakers or El-Sayed's decision to participate.
At the conference, El-Sayed appeared on a panel with far-left Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur and controversial New Jersey-based cleric Zaid Shakir, according to ISNA's itinerary. The panel was titled "Cultivating God Awareness in a Turmoiled America." In the description of the panel, ISNA said the session was aimed at turning taqwa, which means God-Awareness, "into actionable guidance, equipping participants not merely to survive but thrive in workplaces, schools, digital spaces, and community life, and to succeed on their own terms."
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Neither Uygur nor Shakir are strangers to controversy. In February, Uygur wrote on X that "I no longer believe the official 9/11 story." Uygur said that those who would be outraged by his statement had been "brainwashed by corporate media."
Shakir has described himself as "extremely anti-American," according to The Washington Free Beacon. The outlet also reported that in 1992, Shakir urged Muslims to embrace "extrasystemic political action," including "noncooperation tactics to guerrilla war" to influence government policies.
The ISNA conference took place just days before the 25th anniversary of 9/11, making Uygur and Shakir's presence, and El-Sayed's participation, all the more notable. El-Sayed faced his own 9/11 controversy earlier this week over now-deleted tweets from 2021 in which he said he mourned the lives lost in the attacks before taking a swipe at America, according to The New York Post.
"Today, I mourn the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC, perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my faith. Tomorrow, I’ll mourn ~1M lives, millions of injuries, & infrastructural devastation in 3 countries, perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my country," El-Sayed wrote on Sept. 11, 2021.
Abdul El-Sayed spoke at the ISNA conference in Michigan alongside controversial speakers. (JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images)
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While addressing the ISNA conference, El-Sayed reportedly focused on anti-Muslim hate, according to the Post.
"We found ourselves in a moment now where, as people point to us, Muslim Americans, they want to tell us that we don’t belong," El-Sayed said, according to the Post.
"They want to tell us that this country is not ours. They want to tell us that because of our names or how we pray, that somehow we are less than," he added.
El-Sayed previously faced scrutiny for campaigning alongside controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who is Uygur's nephew. Piker was criticized back in 2019 for saying that "America deserved 9/11." He later apologized and retracted the statement. El-Sayed has offered criticism of some of Piker's remarks but has yet to fully disavow him.
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Fox News Digital reached out to El-Sayed and ISNA for comment.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/el-sayed-isna-appearance-draws-scrutiny-controversial-speakers