When it came to which candidate weathered the most overtly racist attacks, in a midterm election full of the most overtly racist campaign attacks in modern memory, there was no contest.
Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, was called a “jihadist” by the president. Labeled a representative of “terrible evil” by the vice president. Smeared as an “extremist” by his Republican opponent. They all intentionally mispronounced his name as if it was a poison on the tongue that needed to be expelled.
But the hate offensive didn’t work. El-Sayed, 42, stepped up to the mic late Tuesday and delivered his victory speech as the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate.
“My name,” he said, pointedly using full, guttural Arabic pronunciation, “is Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.”
It was a clarifying moment for Muslims and for millions of others appalled by the normalization of bigotry handed down from the White House. There is an Allah, after all.
The son of Egyptian immigrants, El-Sayed prevailed over former Rep. Mike Rogers by seven percentage points in one of the most closely watched races of the midterms.
His victory was one among several historic wins scored by the Democrats as they elected more governors and flipped the House and Senate — including the triumphs of America’s first openly gay senator (Chris Pappas of New Hampshire) and first female Native American governor (Deb Haaland of New Mexico), as well as Texas’ first Latina governor (Gina Hinojosa).
But beyond the political implications, El-Sayed speaks for those of us who have been othered by our “foreign” heritage, the color of our skin, the food we eat, our accents or the way we pray.
He embodies what it means to face blistering attacks on your background and faith, and to come out the other side as more American in your ideals and resolve than your slur-slinging detractors.
If that sounds dramatic, so be it. It’s been a brutal decade for Muslims, Arabs or anyone associated with groups maligned, targeted or in many cases deported by the Trump administration. We needed this win to prove to ourselves, and perhaps the rest of the world, that this is not a nation dominated by narrow-minded exclusionists, despite what MAGA has wrought.
El-Sayed kept his cool on the campaign trail, sticking to Michelle Obama’s motto of “When they go low, we go high.” But he showed Tuesday how to have fun poking at the opposition with one hand while holding an olive branch in the other.
“Donald, I know you struggle with my name, so after JD swears me in in January, you can go on and call me Senator,” he said, rubbing in his victory while calling out President Trump for his brazen, Islamophobic rants.
The senator-elect also indirectly responded to JD Vance’s low blows against him and his campaign, which included the vice president calling him a “psychopath” and claiming he trafficked in “anti-white racial hatred.”
In doing so, El-Sayed addressed Vance with a widely used Arabic word meaning “my love.” Why? Because when deploying it against a detractor, it’s the equivalent of sarcastically calling them “sweetheart.”
“JD, habibi, there is this delicious irony in the fact that you’re constitutionally obligated to swear me in in January,” said El-Sayed before throwing a college sports rivalry barb at the Ohio native: “Wolverines 1, Buckeyes 0.”
And as he has always done publicly, El-Sayed openly embraced his Muslim faith while addressing the American people.
He reminded us of the times during his campaign when he said “inshallah” (or “God willing”) to describe his hopes for winning the seat.
“Today, tonight, we can turn that ‘inshallah’ into an ‘alhamdulillah,’” meaning “praise be to God.”
It wasn’t long ago when such words uttered by a Muslim might strike fear in Americans who interpreted them as the calling card of terrorists just before they pulled the pin, flipped the switch or lobbed the bomb (thanks, Hollywood). Now, those words are part of a future senator’s speech to the millions of Americans he’s vowed to represent.
El-Sayed may just be making Arabic halal for the masses. And as the midterm results show, we’re ready for it.
Voters sent a message to Washington rebuking MAGA’s war on DEI, immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community. The Trump-era culture war against folks who look like El-Sayed has not quelled inflation, made housing cheaper, caused gas prices to drop or rendered health insurance affordable. But it may have helped us see each other again, as fellow citizens struggling to keep up.
“As I was campaigning, some of you would come up and ask, ‘How come you don’t hit back? How come you don’t call them racist or hateful?’” El-Sayed said during his victory speech. “They weren’t just attacking me. They were targeting and attacking you. They were targeting and attacking the very idea of America.”
It is about all of us, of course. But Muslim Americans who never thought they’d see the day are basking in El-Sayed’s win.
“We knew that the attacks on Abdul’s Muslim background were a big bull’s-eye for Rogers,” said Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council. “What was heartening was to see it backfire.”
I’m not naive enough to think that the racist sentiment used by some Republicans to energize facets of their electorate is now a thing of the past. It’s always there. But you know what else is always there? People who choose progress instead of fear.
“Thank you. You took a chance on the unlikeliest of candidates,” El-Sayed said during his victory speech.
Mabruk, Abdul. You did it. We did it.