Reported by Al Jazeera
His historic victory in Michigan shows that Muslim Americans need not abandon their identity or Palestine to succeed in politics.
Messages popped up on my WhatsApp account from New York, Gaza, Pakistan and Australia. Friends and colleagues were following Michigan’s Senate race, talking excitedly about Abdul El-Sayed. As the results from Wayne County sealed his victory on Tuesday, I felt something I had rarely felt before in American politics: not a muted relief that someone had lost but genuine joy and hope that someone had won.
El-Sayed, a physician and former Detroit health director, defeated Republican Mike Rogers . He will be the first Muslim ever elected to the United States Senate. As a Muslim American from Michigan, this hit home.
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Like many in Michigan’s Muslim community, I knew of Abdul long before he became a fixture in national headlines, from his 2018 gubernatorial campaign to his Friday sermons in local mosques. As Ramadan began this year, I attended one of his town halls for Muslim constituents. Before a few dozen community members and leaders, Abdul pledged to fight for all Michiganders. His sincerity and commitment to that pledge remained evident even as the pressures of the campaign intensified. I have seen him attend funerals for community members near my home and watched him go from person to person, greeting people with kindness. Even in the final days of an exhausting campaign, he responded personally to messages from the community, including mine.
We attended the same university, the University of Michigan, where he once helped lead the Muslim Students’ Association. I later served as a college student body president there. Just days before the election, Muslim alumni (including me) invited him to a football tailgate party with students, parents and graduates. His former teachers and students have spoken to me with pride about the person they knew.
Muslim Americans are often asked to celebrate any politician who occasionally says “salaam” or appears in a mosque before Election Day. Abdul was not an outsider to our community coming to court us. He belonged to it.
During the campaign, I welcomed hundreds…