On Friday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the Islamic Society of North America’s (ISNA) 63rd annual convention in Detroit in September. Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed who is a U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan will be speaking at that event. Some of the people who will also be highlighted at that event are not people who agree with the values of American culture.

The article reports:

The convention features a rogues’ gallery of notorious Muslim figures who’ve engaged in Holocaust denial and the persecution of Christians and have also been unindicted co-conspirators in terror plots, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. But one speaker stands out for his particularly noxious record: Tariq Masood, an influential Pakistani cleric who is also on the ISNA roster.

…According to multiple Pakistani media reports, Masood in 2021 admitted in a sermon that he forced his 13-year-old niece into marriage, and advised his followers to do the same with their young female relatives. Masood also said it was a husband’s decision whether or not his wife can go to college or must remain a housewife, citing Sharia, or Islamic religious law. In 2024, Canadian activists urged the government to block Masood’s visa to the country over his “pedophilic rhetoric.”

Masood has also promoted inflammatory views about Jews.

In a 2024 sermon titled “The Final Humiliation of the Jews,” Masood said, according to translations of the event, that Jews’ “cunning minds” had worked to bring the world under their control.

“The Quran condemns Jews,” Masood said, while adding that “not all Jews are the same.” He nevertheless claimed that the amount of “evil and turmoil” among Jews was unmatched by any other community in the world.

…Other speakers include Siraj Wahhaj, a New York-based imam who was an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Texas-based imam Yasir Qadhi, who will appear on several panels over the weekend, has called the Holocaust a “hoax” and said that Adolf Hitler “never intended to mass-destroy the Jews.” Hussam Ayloush, an official with the pro-Hamas Council on American-Islamic Relations, will speak on a panel about civic participation. After Oct. 7, Ayloush said that “Israel should be attacked,” and that if “you want to pick up arms and defend your people and your land, that is a legitimate right.”

There is a possibility that Abdul El-Sayed (as he prefers to be called) will be elected. It depends on the turnout of the Muslim population in Michigan and how many Americans choose to turn out.

Addendum:

How did we get here?

According to Arab America:

The origin story of how the Yemeni community in Michigan is an interesting one. Way back in the early 1900s, Henry Ford started recruiting Yemeni workers to work at Ford’s factories. After a few years, Ford sent for more workers and the Yemeni American community began to grow. People who gained citizenship during their time working for Ford brought family over and started lives in Michigan while remaining close to their family back in Yemen.

Now more than 30,000 Yemeni Americans live in Michigan. In recent years, the civil war in Yemen, and subsequent humanitarian crisis, has driven a new wave of immigration. The Yemeni community lives largely in Hamtramck and Dearborn, but it differs in several ways from other Arab American communities in the area.

“The Yemeni community is a distinct community that really deserves to be looked at in its own right” says Brian Stone. “Often umbrella terms like Middle Eastern or Arab Americans are used, and it really papers over the things that are specific and unique, special about the Yemeni community.”

That is the root of what we are seeing in Michigan now.