Abdul El-Sayed’s Michigan Senate primary victory was followed by a far-right digital campaign targeting his Muslim identity.
Right-wing accounts circulated his use of “inshallah” without context and linked it to claims about Islam, Sharia and immigration.
The campaign was amplified by Republican and pro-Israel figures, with Donald Trump later attacking El-Sayed directly.
Abdul El-Sayed, an Egyptian American doctor, won Michigan’s Democratic primary for a US Senate seat, but his victory was followed almost immediately by a digital campaign that turned a common Arabic expression from his election-night speech into supposed evidence of an Islamist threat.
El-Sayed had used the word “inshallah”, meaning “God willing”, while expressing hope that his victory would show that money alone could not decide elections in the United States. But within hours, right-wing accounts on X began circulating short clips of the speech without its wider context, presenting the word as a warning sign of a religious and ideological takeover.
An investigation by Al Jazeera found that the campaign involved a network of 1,966 accounts and more than 2,500 connections in its first 24 hours. The posts increasingly moved beyond criticism of El-Sayed's politics, targeting his Muslim identity and Arab American communities in Michigan while linking his candidacy to claims about Sharia, immigration and alleged ties to Islamist organisations.
The attacks also unfolded against the political backdrop of El-Sayed's primary victory, which was seen as a setback for pro-Israel lobbying groups such as AIPAC. As the campaign against him grew, Republican politicians and pro-Israel figures joined the criticism, while Donald Trump eventually targeted El-Sayed directly.
How ‘inshallah’ became the first target
The initial attacks focused on a single word.
During his election-night speech, El-Sayed used “inshallah” while saying he hoped his victory would demonstrate that elections in the US were not determined simply by money. For Arabic speakers, the expression is commonly used to express hope that something will happen.
According to Al Jazeera, that context was stripped away as accounts began circulating clips that highlighted the word itself.
Right-wing influencer Benny Johnson posted a clip that received more than 193,000 views with the caption: “Muslim Socialist Candidate for Senate in Michigan Abdul El-Sayed says ‘inshallah’ during his speech on election night.”
The account ALX similarly presented the speech as suspicious in a post that attracted more than 80,000 views. Other accounts repeatedly described El-Sayed as a “socialist Muslim candidate”, while far-right figure Laura Loomer called the clip “disgusting”.
The rhetoric escalated even before the primary results were final. One account claimed an “Islamic communist takeover of the left is coming”.
What had been an ordinary expression used during a political speech was therefore recast as evidence of an alleged religious project. The focus shifted from what El-Sayed had said about money and elections to what his use of an Arabic phrase supposedly revealed about his faith and political intentions.
How the online campaign expanded
The “inshallah” clip was only one part of a broader stream of posts targeting El-Sayed.
Al Jazeera mapped a network of 1,966 accounts and more than 2,500 connections during the first 24 hours of the campaign. Its analysis recorded 1,847 reposts, 1,157 quotes and 1,536 mentions.
The investigation found that the spread relied heavily on resharing existing material rather than direct discussion. That helped individual clips and claims move rapidly between accounts while maintaining a common narrative about El-Sayed.
Accounts such as End Wokeness also circulated an out-of-context clip in which El-Sayed said: “When they go low, we don’t go high. We take them to the mud and choke them out.”
The remark came from an August 2025 event where El-Sayed was subverting former first lady Michelle Obama's famous phrase while criticising political attacks by President Donald Trump's MAGA base. In the new context, however, the clip was circulated without that explanation.
The attacks then moved from individual statements to broader claims about Islam and immigration. Posts asserted that “Sharia is coming to America” and that Michigan was being “invaded”.
Hamtramck was also pulled into the campaign. The Michigan city has around 28,000 residents, about 25 percent of whom are Arab Muslims. Online accounts described it as an “occupied city” and portrayed immigration and the expansion of mosques as evidence of a demographic invasion.
The result was a wider narrative in which El-Sayed's candidacy was presented not simply as a political challenge to his Republican opponent, but as part of an alleged religious and demographic transformation of Michigan and the United States.
Why pro-Israel and Republican figures entered the debate
The campaign against El-Sayed also intersected with a broader political dispute surrounding his candidacy.
His primary victory was viewed as a setback for pro-Israel lobbying groups such as AIPAC. Al Jazeera reported that the attacks were subsequently amplified by political figures and pro-Israel organisations, bringing questions about El-Sayed's views, associations and support into the campaign.
A Fox News report alleged that El-Sayed received donations from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR. El-Sayed did not comment on the claims. CAIR, an American Muslim civil rights group, has itself been targeted by right-wing politicians and organisations in the US.
Republican Senator Ted Cruz amplified the claims by sharing a hearing clip in which a witness alleged ties between El-Sayed and Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups. Cruz urged voters to find out “who is behind him”.
The American Jewish Committee described El-Sayed's candidacy as a worrying sign of divisive rhetoric, while Israeli activist Yoseph Haddad called him “dangerous”.
Other accounts framed the election as a confrontation between religious and cultural blocs. Hananya Naftali, a YouTuber and former digital aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, called on Americans to defend “Judeo-Christian values before it is too late”.
The campaign increasingly brought together allegations about El-Sayed's Muslim identity, his views on Israel, his alleged associations and his support from the political left, presenting them as evidence of a broader threat.
Trump takes the attacks into the general election
The campaign received another political boost when Trump attacked candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America. He called them “crazy” and said they would make cities “filthy and disgusting”.
After Michigan's primary results were officially released, Trump targeted El-Sayed directly. He called him a “hater of Jews” and “hater of Israel” and said he would bring “filth, crime, death, destruction, embarrassment”.
According to Al Jazeera, Trump's intervention brought several of the narratives already circulating among far-right accounts into a broader Republican attack ahead of November's midterm elections. El-Sayed will face Republican candidate Mike Rogers in the general election.
El-Sayed has responded by attempting to shift the discussion back to policy and away from identity-based attacks.
He has directly addressed accusations of anti-Semitism and emphasised his commitment to the safety of Jewish Americans. He said his concern for their safety is no different from his concern for his own daughters. A Fox News clip of the statement received more than one million views.
Rather than responding with attacks on the identities of his opponents, El-Sayed has focused on equality, arguing that all Americans deserve quality education, healthcare and decent jobs regardless of their origin, skin colour or how they pray.
He has also received support from prominent Democratic figures. Senator Bernie Sanders congratulated him for taking on the “billionaire class”, while Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin and Senator Elizabeth Warren praised his focus on working families and his willingness to challenge corporate influence in politics.
The pattern documented by Al Jazeera shows how the campaign developed from a clipped reference to “inshallah” into a broader political narrative. A word used to express hope on election night was separated from its context, attached to claims about Islam and immigration, and then folded into attacks from political and pro-Israel figures.
