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DEARBORN, Mich. — Campaigning relentlessly across Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed didn’t highlight the possibility that he could become the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate. But with victory in hand, he savored his triumph over the vitriol aimed at him and his fellow Muslim Americans.

“They tried to demonize people because of how they pray,” he told the Associated Press on Wednesday. “And Michigan — the whole Michigan — clapped back. People don’t want that. They’re sick of it.”

He showed his pride in his victory speech, declaring: “My name is Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.”

Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath yanked anti-Muslim sentiment into the forefront of American life, those emotions are shared by many Muslim Americans in Michigan and across the country.

They saw a surge of anti-Muslim rhetoric after Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York City mayor a year ago, and they saw the attacks intensify as El-Sayed became the new prime target. President Trump called him a “jihadist” who was “on the side of the terrorists.” Dozens of Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress formed a Sharia-Free America Caucus, depicting Islam’s religious code as a threat to the U.S. Constitution.

But now, after El-Sayed’s defeat of GOP rival Mike Rogers was confirmed early Wednesday, there is a pervasive sense that a broader victory is at hand.

The outcome “represents a historic turning point for American Muslim political engagement and a historic defeat for the politics of hate,” said Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“Anti-Muslim extremists, Israel lobby groups and even the president of the United States used every smear in the book to paint Dr. El-Sayed as a Muslim bogeyman,” he said. “None of it was true, and none of it worked. Anti-Muslim hate was on the ballot, and it failed.”

In Dearborn, talk of ‘a beautifully American story’

Excitement over El-Sayed’s victory was palpable in Dearborn, a city near Detroit with a sizable Arab American population. The mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, said residents showed up at the ballot box in huge numbers.

“What a beautifully American story,” Hammoud said. “One of our brightest and best earned the support of the majority of Michiganders who participated in yesterday’s election. And regardless of the direction in which he prays, they’re sending him to the U.S. Senate.”

Hammoud, who has known El-Sayed for more than a decade, said although his win was important for many Arab Americans, people voted for him because of his platform, not his identity. He cited support in Dearborn for independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. Sanders, who is Jewish and caucuses with Democrats, ran on a progressive platform.

In El-Sayed, residents of Dearborn “finally saw themselves and a candidate who appealed to them, but it had to do with far more than just his ethnicity or his religion,” Hammoud said. “It was honestly because of the policies and building a coalition with this community in an honest way.”

When Zaynah Jadallah, 26, canvassed for El-Sayed in Dearborn, she said most people told her they already planned on voting for him before inviting her in for water or food. She credited the name recognition to El-Sayed’s grassroots campaigning and his pride in his Egyptian heritage.

“He’s always been proud of his identity. He never shied away from it or from saying his name,” Jadallah said.

Yasmin El-Sayed, no relation to the senator-elect, took her two daughters to the Detroit watch party from New York. She teared up after the victory speech.

“Having grown up in a post-9/11 world, being Muslim, being Arab myself, never in a million years did I think we would see what we saw today,” she said.

In a time of suspicion of government, a message of representation

El-Sayed depicted his election as a victory for all those “who don’t see themselves reflected in our government or who’ve been told that they don’t belong for some reason or another — not just how they pray but who they love, how they identify, the color of their skin, where they grew up.″

“I didn’t run to be the first Muslim senator. I ran to be the next senator of the state of Michigan who happens to be Muslim,” he said. ″But I also know that democracy is constantly about the conversation about who we are, who we want to be.”

“Michigan proved just how big we are. Rejected a hateful, spiteful campaign that had nothing to say about the issues and only wanted to point to my name and my face,” he added. ″I want all of those folks out there who have been told that America’s not big enough for them to reflect on that. America really is big enough for all of us.”

Mohamed Gula, CEO of the Muslim American advocacy group Emgage Action, said he was elated by El-Sayed’s triumph after a year of “extremely Islamophobic and disgusting rhetoric being used as a campaign strategy.”

“For Abdul to come out last night and use his full name meant the world to someone who grew up in post-9/11 America, where the Muslim American community was seen through a national security lens,” Gula said.

“Our children, years from now, will be able to run for office,” he said, “to be seen as who they are.”

A debate over the place of sharia law — and its very definition

Among the most frequent targets of anti-Muslim rhetoric was sharia, the religious code that provides Muslims with guidance on how to lead righteous lives. At the Republicans’ midterm convention in Dallas, some of the loudest cheers came after GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas declared: “Sharia law has no place in America.”

Muslim American civic leaders and scholars — in Texas and other states — responded forcefully to the anti-sharia rhetoric that dates back more than 15 years.

They passionately defended sharia — the way it’s practiced in the United States — as positive guidance that shares elements with the codes of other faiths, such as the Ten Commandments and the collective body of Jewish law derived from the Torah. They rebutted the claims of GOP critics that sharia is a coercive code that threatens the Constitution and the judicial system.

Gula noted that Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton were among the leaders of the anti-sharia campaign. Abbott lost his bid for reelection in Tuesday’s voting, and Paxton was trounced by Democrat James Talarico in the race for a U.S. Senate seat.

“I saw this as not just Muslims standing against Islamophobia as never before,” Gula said. “I saw Americans saying hate will not be used as a campaign issue … we are not going to accept hate.”

Asma Uddin, a professor at Michigan State University’s College of Law, has argued that many American politicians are depicting ordinary Muslim religious practices — such as prayer, choice of apparel, family counseling and mosque attendance — as evidence of political danger.

“What I find especially exciting is that El-Sayed won in a political climate where being visibly Muslim can still be a liability,” she said. His victory “gives us real reason for optimism. It suggests that anti-Muslim attacks don’t necessarily carry the political weight that those deploying them assume they do.”

GaNun, Cappelletti and Crary write for the Associated Press. Cappelletti reported from Washington and Crary from New York.

Dearborn, Michigan – Jake Lang, a far-right provocateur in a bulletproof vest, shouts anti-Muslim obscenities on a bullhorn outside a rally featuring former US President Barack Obama in Detroit.

His associates, wearing crusader-themed accessories – including a tin shield featuring a black cross – hold campaign signs for Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate candidate in Michigan, who is in a close race with Democrat Abdul El-Sayed.

If it weren’t for the bigoted slogans, the people lining up around them to attend the campaign event for El-Sayed and other Democrats could have mistakenly thought the protesters were in Halloween costumes.

“Get the f*** out, Muslims,” Lang shouted. “The crusade is coming. Self-deport.”

Lang may appear like a fringe agitator. But Muslim American activists say the bigotry he is spreading is going mainstream, especially in the context of the Senate race in Michigan.

Anti-Muslim attacks against El-Sayed have been perpetuated at the highest level of the US government, including by President Donald Trump and his cabinet members.

Suehaila Amen, a prominent Arab and Muslim advocate in the Detroit area, said bigotry against her community is reaching an all-time high.

“They make immediately post 9/11 look like a walk in the park for us. This has been absolutely disgusting to witness,” Amen told Al Jazeera.

One of Lang’s allies, Pastor Lorenzo Sewell, is an official faith adviser to the Rogers campaign.

Sewell helped Lang organise an anti-Muslim march in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn – home to a large Arab and Muslim community – in August.

Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn, said the city – which has long been a target for anti-Muslim provocateurs – has been receiving an increased number of threats in recent months.

“The general public is unaware of how many threats are aimed towards the city of Dearborn on a daily basis, via social [media], via our dispatch when they’re calling 911 or calling our call centre, and lobbing these threats against the residents of the city each and every single day,” Hammoud told Al Jazeera.

“That does worry me.”

Escalating attacks

While the Rogers campaign did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment about the Republican candidate’s links to Sewell, Rogers defended his focus on El-Sayed’s background, saying it was for national security.

“This is not about the way you pray; it’s the way you think,” Rogers told reporters after his debate with El-Sayed earlier this month.

Local leaders say their community is not cowering in the face of such threats and Trump’s near-daily attacks, and is pushing back through civic engagement and rallying around the El-Sayed campaign.

“Trump is a fascist,” Hammoud told Al Jazeera. “I think the best thing we can do, the best response, is to send Abdul to the US Senate, somebody who’s got two doctorates, someone who is a son of this country, a son of the state, someone who is the captain of his high school team … I think that that’s the best response that we can give fascism.”

Trump has repeatedly mocked El-Sayed’s name, misrepresenting it as Mohammed, and called the Democratic candidate a “jihadist”.

Amen said Arab and Muslim Americans are used to being targeted for their names, but when the president does it, it legitimises bigotry and racism.

“It’s not just some loser that lives around the block who may call you a racist expletive; it’s the loser who lives in the White House,” she said.

Amen added that Arab and Muslim communities are going about their daily lives and organising politically despite the escalating attacks, stressing that they reject attempts to cast them as foreigners or outsiders.

“We are an integral part of the fabric of this nation, whether people like it or not,” she told Al Jazeera.

Republicans across US target El-Sayed

As the Senate race intensifies, Rogers has been baselessly accusing El-Sayed of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.

Last month, Rogers went as far as agreeing with a social media post calling El-Sayed, a doctor and former public health official, a “terrorist”.

Trump has suggested that El-Sayed would be a physical threat to the Capitol, saying that he would want him to go through a metal detector.

At an event in western Michigan earlier this week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr incorrectly claimed that Arabs do not produce literature or science and “don’t win Nobel Prizes”. He argued that the Muslim Brotherhood – which only briefly held power in Egypt between 2012 and 2013 – has destroyed Arab civilisation.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz joined in on such attacks, describing El-Sayed as a “jihadist leprechaun”.

Cruz warned that El-Sayed, a Michigan-born and raised father of two with a medical degree and a doctorate in public health, could end up on the Senate Intelligence Committee and endanger national security.

“If I am correct that he is a passionate supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, there is a very real risk that Americans will die as a result,” he said.

On Wednesday, Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy invoked Dearborn – one of the safest and fastest-growing cities in Michigan – to drum up fear of immigration.

“Look at what’s happening in Dearborn, Michigan, for God’s sake. We’re not going to let that come to our state of Ohio,” he said.

Trump supporters weigh in

El-Sayed, who is of Egyptian descent, has avoided focusing on the attacks, calling them “deflections and deceptions”.

It’s not clear how attacks linked to El-Sayed’s Muslim faith and Arab heritage will affect the race.

About 38 percent of respondents in a survey of potential voters conducted by Michigan State University said a candidate being a Muslim would make them less likely to offer support to their campaign.

After a Trump rally for Rogers in Port Huron, northeast of Detroit, where the president spent most of his nearly two-hour speech attacking El-Sayed, some attendees appeared to agree that El-Sayed may be a threat to national security.

As the US president spoke, shouts of “traitor”, referring to El-Sayed, erupted from the crowd.

Trump supporter David Beamer, whose son died in the 9/11 attacks in 2001, spoke at the event and questioned El-Sayed’s American identity.

“Abdul has a birth certificate. The birth certificate says he’s a citizen of America. You know what? A birth certificate doesn’t make you an American,” Beamer said.

Al Jazeera asked Duane Crempa, a 72-year-old Republican in a Batman mask who attended the Trump speech on Sunday, whether he believes that El-Sayed is a “jihadist” as Trump claims.

Crempa said he is a good judge of character. “Yeah, there is something not right with him. That’s all I’ll say; there’s definitely something not right,” he added.

Jermaine Miller, who also was at the rally, told Al Jazeera he hopes El-Sayed is not a “terrorist”.

“But I mean, it sounds convincing, but it is believable,” he said of Trump’s allegations that the Democratic candidate is a “jihadist”.

‘It’s awful to live this way’

In the Detroit area, Arab and Muslim advocates say the issue is bigger than a Senate seat, arguing that such rhetoric endangers their communities and risks ripping the social fabric of the state.

“We’ve seen the increase in hate marches and hate speech and people being very comfortable sharing their hateful views online and coming into our city and harassing people for no reason – people who are just trying to live and function in this country,” Amen said.

“It’s been tremendously heartbreaking to watch our community constantly have to question why people are maliciously maligning them in public.”

Earlier this year, two gunmen killed three people outside a mosque complex in San Diego in southern California in what authorities said was a hate crime.

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who represents Dearborn and parts of Detroit, said she fears for her two Muslim boys, Adam and Yousif, amid the rise of hate with the election campaign.

“Yesterday, we were all watching the football game, and we literally had to turn off the ads every time in between [plays] because we didn’t want our babies to see these awful, racist ads,” Tlaib told Al Jazeera.

“It’s awful to live this way right now.”

With petrol in Michigan nearing record highs, Arab and Muslim advocates say their communities are being scapegoated to cover up the shortcomings of the Trump administration, including the war in Iran.

Abdelhalim Abdelrahman, communication director for American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), said the attacks against El-Sayed amount to “disgusting Islamophobia” that serves as a distraction.

“Abdul El-Sayed’s name is a visibly Muslim name, and it’s being treated as inherently suspicious, as if a Muslim American cannot willfully execute their duties as an active member of Congress to protect the American people,” Abdelrahman told Al Jazeera.

At the Trump rally in Port Huron, one of Trump’s allies appeared to weigh El-Sayed’s candidacy against petrol prices.

Brian Pannebecker, a retiree from an auto manufacturing company Trump invited to the stage on Sunday, stressed that Michiganders need to vote for the Republican ticket.

“I don’t care if they’re paying a buck and a half more a gallon for gasoline. That is no excuse to vote for a socialist Islamist for the US Senate,” Pannebecker said.

STACEY Solomon has unveiled her new-look bathroom – and admitted the colour choice could prove divisive.

The TV star – who has recently uprooted her brood from their famed house Pickle Cottage and moved to a new £2m property – shared photos on Instagram of the room, decked out in orange and grey tones.

Stacey proudly captioned the snap: “The Orange Bathroom – I’m ready for people to hate this!”

The mum-of-five, who also shares a step-son with partner Joe Swash, went on: “Honestly I love it so so much… as soon as I saw this tangerine bath set I fell in love with it.

“I just couldn’t throw it away it was so pretty.

“I have plenty of rooms to be neutral in but this is the boys upstairs bathroom and they LOVE this colour so I got to have so much fun in here bringing colour back to life.

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“This room now just makes me happy as soon as I open the door.

“It’s so bright and cheerful!”

Stacey admitted there are “a few snagging bits to do I think I need to add some more bits and bobs but here she is”.

Ticking the room off the list, she finished: “One room done! Wahoo!”

Despite expecting fan backlash, the comments underneath the post were overwhelmingly positive.

“This is incredible,” ITV News‘ Paul Brand gushed, as another fan wrote that it was “nice to see something with a bit of personality as opposed to neutrals and greys that have engulfed the past decade!”

Another remarked, “Abso-loo-tely gorgeous! Totally love it,” as someone else penned: “Oh wow you’ve really smashed that. Looks amazing, great vision that a lot of people wouldn’t have thought of!”

One fan commented that it looked like a “Sindy dream house from the 70s”, as another pointed out the u-bend on the toilet still needed painting.

“I love love it! But stace the white pipe at the back of the loo can we spray paint this? It’s making my eye twitch!” they griped.

Stacey proved that the transformation was quite something, as she shared before snaps of the room, which featured dreary brown tiles and carpet and dull fixtures and fittings.

For the new room, the TV star has installed an orange bath, toilet and sink, with matching accessories, and added light grey tiles and white paint to the walls.

The taps and shower fixtures have been fitted in a brushed bronze, and orange stripes have been painted on the walls – with a “Get Naked” bath mat to complete the quirky look.