A Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan faces campaign attacks based on allegations that originated from a claim made by conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer eight years ago, according to reporting by The Guardian. The controversy centers on an open letter El-Sayed signed in 2012 as a medical student at Columbia University in support of democratic reform in Egypt. Loomer has claimed since El-Sayed entered politics in 2018 that the letter constituted public support for the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian political organization.
El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, former congressman Mike Rogers, began emphasizing these allegations in August and has continued to do so throughout the campaign. Rogers has stated that El-Sayed “pledged his support to the Muslim Brotherhood,” an characterization that has been amplified by prominent figures including Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The attacks intensified in recent weeks when a video circulated showing El-Sayed declining to disavow the Muslim Brotherhood after being asked by a Republican operative. Rogers has incorporated the allegation into campaign advertisements, claiming El-Sayed “has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood” and “publicly supported these terrorists.”
According to Egyptian journalist Hossam el-Hamalawy, the actual text of the letter makes no reference to the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead, el-Hamalawy states that the letter “called on Morsi to pursue the goals of the revolution by purging the state institutions, particularly the police and state media, of officials loyal to the former regime.” The letter was published only in Arabic in an Egyptian state newspaper and does not contain the characterizations attributed to it by critics. El-Hamalawy noted that while the newspaper’s editors labeled it as a plea from “Morsi’s supporters in America,” the signatories themselves did not use that description.
El-Hamalawy observed that the campaign tactics mirror strategies employed by Arab authoritarian regimes, which have characterized demands for democratic change as inherently Islamist-driven. He also noted the irony that many of these same regimes have received political and military support from Western governments. The Muslim Brotherhood is not designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department, though it was officially banned in Egypt following the 2013 military coup that removed President Mohamed Morsi from power.
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