The Lewisham Islamic Centre accused the charity watchdog of imposing disproportionate expectations on Muslim charities.
Published On 12 Nov 202612 Nov 2026
The Lewisham Islamic Centre (LIC) in London has rejected a warning issued by the UK’s independent Charity Commission, which reprimanded the mosque for comments on Palestinian suffering made by an imam during October 2023 sermons.
“The matters raised by the Commission represent a troubling attempt to scrutinise, restrict and penalise legitimate religious worship” and “the expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people,” the mosque said in an official statement issued Wednesday.
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The statement comes after the charity watchdog accused the religious centre of including “content that was inflammatory, divisive and not in the charity’s best interests” during two separate sermons, as they issued an official warning urging the centre to “improve its handling of speakers and events hosted at the charity’s premises” on October 20.
The commission warned that if the mosque fails to “remedy the misconduct”, it may be subjected to further action.
‘Unnecessarily burdensome’
The mosque also accused the commission of imposing disproportionate expectations on Muslim charities after the warning, describing them as “unnecessarily burdensome”. The religious centre explained that a sermon, or khutbah, is an integral part of Islamic worship and often speaks to the issues affecting the wellbeing of congregations and their communities. The LIC worried that the warning suggested the commission was “entitled to dictate which subjects Imams may address in their khutbahs”.
LIC added that they are currently seeking legal advice as to the best way to move forward following the warning.
CAGE International, a London-based human rights organisation, supported the mosque, and claimed the Charity Commission showed lenience when it came to pro-Israel charities.
“The Commission’s position treats the word ‘Zionist’ as inflammatory in itself,” CAGE said on Thursday. “This merges opposition to a political ideology with hatred of a people, and places Muslim religious expression under suspicion by default.”
“The Commission has told a mosque that naming who is responsible for Palestinian suffering falls outside acceptable religious practice,” a spokesperson for CAGE said. “This is the same regulator asking for the power to remove trustees for their views,” they added, referring to a recent government consultation to expand the Charity Commission’s powers.
Michigan voters are casting their ballots in a charged, closely watched race that could make Democrat Abdul El-Sayed the first Muslim in the United States Senate and help decide control of the chamber.
Mike Rogers, his Republican opponent, cast his ballot at a polling station in White Lake, Michigan hours after polls opened. El-Sayed had already had his vote submitted and counted through an absentee ballot before Election Day.
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The two candidates seek to fill the seat of retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters. A final New York Times/Siena poll placed El-Sayed 11 points ahead of Rogers going into the election.
Polls opened at 7am local time (12:00 GMT) and close at 8pm (01:00 GMT on Wednesday). If the race is close, it may not be called until later on Wednesday. The US Department of Justice has announced that election monitors will be present at the polls in Michigan and all 50 other states, a first in US history.
El-Sayed, a Muslim born to Egyptian parents, is the former head of Detroit’s health department and has campaigned on progressive policies such as Medicare for All.
Rogers, a former congressman and close ally of US President Donald Trump, is seeking to come back after a narrow loss to a Democrat in a 2024 Senate race.
Democrats need to gain four seats in Tuesday’s midterm elections to wrest back the Senate from Republicans and rein in Trump. The race is also seen as a test of whether a progressive who openly criticises Israel can win in a swing state.
Both candidates made a final push on social media as voting got under way.
“It’s time. It’s up to us to show the country what’s possible. The world is watching,” El-Sayed wrote, sharing an upbeat campaign video that features former US President Barack Obama.
Rogers posted a video that featured interviews with supporters, one of whom called El-Sayed an “extremist”.
“We have a state to save”, the post read.
Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer gave a firm endorsement of El-Sayed after casting his own ballot in New York’s race.
“There are millions of Michiganders whose number one issue is getting their costs down,” said Schumer.
“Abdul El-Sayed is … talking to the people about those issues and doing things about them … He is going to win tonight because he’s talking about what Michiganders care about.”
‘One vote’
The El-Sayed campaign’s final days were overshadowed by a rift with Congresswoman Haley Stevens, a fellow Democrat whom El-Sayed narrowly defeated in a primary election in August.
On Sunday, Stevens endorsed Rogers, saying she was “choosing country over hate” and capping off a weeks-long row about El-Sayed’s opposition to US support for Israel.
Stevens is a staunch supporter of Israel, and the pro-Israel lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spent more than $30m backing her against El-Sayed. A majority of her large donors lined up to support Rogers after her loss, channeling $9m into a Republican group that supports him, according to The New York Times.
El-Sayed, by contrast, has accused Israel of genocide in Gaza and argued that US aid to Israel would be better spent at home.
Asked by NewsNation on her way in to vote for Rogers whether her change in support was worth it, Stevens replied: “Absolutely. Voting is always worth it, right?”
Senate leader Schumer, who had initially backed Stevens, was asked whether her defection could hand the election to Republicans. “Haley Stevens is one vote,” he replied.
Islamophobic attacks
El-Sayed, the Michigan-born son of Egyptian immigrants, has faced persistent attacks on his faith. Republican Party ads have sought to link him to “terrorism” and radicalism, with Trump joining in the inflammatory rhetoric.
The US president has repeatedly called El-Sayed a “jihadist” and a “nasty guy”, mocking his name and repeating an unfounded, widely circulated Republican claim that he belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Hours before polls opened, Trump once again took aim at El-Sayed, this time in a post on his Truth Social platform.
“Abdul El-Sayed Hates Jews and Hates Blacks. Don’t feel bad, he also Hates Whites. Only fools would vote for him in the Michigan race for the U.S. Senate! He will, 100%, do you in! VOTE FOR MIKE ROGERS,” Trump wrote.
The US president also mentioned El-Sayed in a Fox News interview early on Election Day, when he said annual US financial aid to Israel should stop at the end of 2026.
“Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayed when they [Israel] don’t need it?” he said.
Trump attacks Muslim politicians Abdul El-Sayed and Ilhan Omar in his two last rallies on the campaign trail.
United States President Donald Trump has doubled down on Islamophobic rhetoric and conspiracy theories about the Democratic Party at campaign events in Iowa and Kansas, days before the US votes in crucial midterm elections that will decide who controls Congress during Trump’s last two years as president.
The president repeated his claim that Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic US Senate hopeful from Michigan, is a “jihadist” at both rallies on Sunday, and joked that if he gets elected, the Senate will have to install metal detectors to scan him before he enters the building.
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“We’ll have a hundred senators, and most of them will go directly [into the Senate]… We’re gonna have to get a special metal detector for Abdul,” Trump said, drawing laughter from the crowd.
He also repeated unfounded claims that El-Sayed is a member of the transnational Muslim Brotherhood, branches of which the US has deemed foreign “terrorist” organisations.
At both events, Trump repeatedly urged his supporters to make sure they go out and vote, asking them to “pretend I’m on the ballot”, as he sought to energise Republican voters ahead of what polling suggests could be a bruising election for the party.
The two rallies were cancelled last week but were suddenly rescheduled. They will be Trump’s final travelling events before the election.
Both speeches were interrupted multiple times by hecklers.
In Iowa, the president said he would “love” Democratic Representative Haley Stevens, who lost to Abdul El-Sayed in the primaries, to switch parties, after she endorsed El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, Mike Rogers.
At both rallies, he took aim at US Representative for Minnesota Ilhan Omar, whom Trump claims, without evidence, was previously married to her brother and had children with him.
In Kansas, Trump attacked the Democratic Senate hopeful Adam Hamilton, a church pastor, for his support for trans rights, and called him a “stiff” who reads his sermons from teleprompters.
The US-Israel war on Iran, the cost of living, immigration, perceived media bias against him, and the administration of former President Joe Biden also featured heavily in Trump’s two speeches.
Two critical races
While Iowa and Kansas are represented mostly by Republican lawmakers, polling suggests Democrats could flip both states.
Kansas has five federal congressional seats up for election in the midterms: one Senate seat and all four House seats. The state last elected a Democratic senator in 1932.
In Iowa, the Senate race is too close to call, but polling suggests that two Iowan state representative seats up for grabs are leaning Democrat.
The US will vote in the midterm elections on November 3.
Supporters watch US President Donald Trump speak at a midterm campaign rally at Five Flags Center in Dubuque, Iowa, on November 1, 2026 [Brendan Smialowski/AFP]
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.
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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.
Muslim American activist Suehaila Amen in Dearborn, Michigan, on October 26 [Ali Harb/Al Jazeera]
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.
Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, October 28 [Ali Harb/Al Jazeera]
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.
US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has condemned anti-Muslim election rhetoric, warning of its impact on the community during a press conference in Michigan. Tlaib said the hateful political adverts on television have also affected her own family.
United States Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has sparked uproar with comments he has made denying Arab contributions to mathematics, science and literature.
In a high-voltage rant on Monday, the US health secretary said, “There’s five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don’t produce science. They don’t win the Nobel Prize. They don’t win the Fields Prize. They don’t win the Wolf Prize. They don’t produce literature.”
RFK Jr, who has been involved in anti-vaccine campaigns and has promoted a debunked theory linking vaccines to autism, made the comments during a US election campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan while supporting Republican nominee Mike Rogers, who is up against Arab-American Democrat nominee Abdul El-Sayed, in a tightly contested battle for Michigan’s Senate seat in next week’s midterm elections.
Critics said the comments were racist, Islamophobic and factually inaccurate, pointing to modern and historic Arab innovation in multiple fields.
Here’s how Arabs have made vital contributions to the human understanding of maths, science and literature through the centuries.
Arab contributions to maths, science and humanities
The period known as the Islamic Golden Age, from around 750 AD to 1258 AD, produced many key Arab contributions to medicine at a time when Europe was said to be in its Dark Ages. During this time, Arabic was the language of science and scholarship.
1st-4th centuries: The numerals 0-9, which originated in ancient India, were adopted by Arab mathematicians who spread them across the world. They displaced Roman numerals as a more advanced number system in mathematics.
8th century: Arab and Persian mathematicians were studying the ancient Indian concept of zero in mathematics in Baghdad, long before the Europeans. The number zero was crucial to the development of mathematics – but was absent from widely used Roman numerals in Europe.
813-833: The Arab mathematician Muḥammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi – one of those studying the number 0 – is often referred to as the “father of algebra” as he was the first to treat the method as a separate mathematical discipline in his work, Al-Jabr. This method provided the first linear and quadratic equations, still used as a core part of mathematical study today.
965-1040: Ibn al-Haytham, known as the “father of modern optics”, explained the role that light entering the eye plays in human vision. He was born in Basra in Iraq, but spent most of his working life in Cairo attending to noble families.
936-1013: Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, called “the father of modern surgery”, was considered the greatest surgeon in the Middle Ages. He wrote a 30-volume encyclopaedia detailing medical practices and designed and illustrated many surgical instruments. Born in Azahara, in Andalusia, he was known as Abulcasis in Europe.
9th century: Fatima al-Fihri founded the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco. It is often cited as the oldest continually operating university.
1213-1288: Ibn al-Nafis described pulmonary circulation – the process by which blood passes through the lungs – several centuries before Europeans understood it. He wrote more than 110 volumes of work on surgery, ophthalmology and philosophy while working as a chief physician in Egypt.
915-965: Abu al-Tayyib al-Mutanabbi, regarded as the greatest poet in the Arabic language, was Yemeni and grew up immersed in Bedouin Arabic culture. He wrote in classical Arabic and many of his verses became sayings used in everyday Arabic.
1100-1165: Muhammad al-Idrisi was a geographer known for making the Tabula Rogeriana, one of the most accurate and detailed medieval world maps, and a high point of Islamic geography. He was born in Ceuta in Morocco.
A view of a sign reading ‘The Norwegian Nobel Committee’ inside the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway, October 6, 2023 [File: Tom Little/Reuters]
Prize-winning Arabs
In more modern times, RFK Jr’s assertion that Arabs do not win Nobel prizes for science and literature is very far from the truth. Here are some of the highlights:
1960: Nobel Prize for Medicine
Peter Medawar won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for work on for work on acquired immune tolerance, which underpins organ transplantation. He was born in Brazil to a Lebanese father.
1966: The Fields Medal
Michael Atiyah won the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award for mathematics, in 1966. He was born in London to a Lebanese father and Scottish mother. Educated in Egypt, he spent much of his childhood in Cairo and Khartoum.
1988: Nobel Prize for Literature
Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his body of work, including the Cairo Trilogy, which the Swedish Academy said formed “an Arabic narrative art that applies to all mankind”. He is still the only winner of the prize who wrote in Arabic.
1990: Nobel Prize for Chemistry
Elias James Corey won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for developing retrosynthetic analysis. He is an American of Lebanese descent.
1993: Wolf Prize for Chemistry
Egyptian Ahmed Zewail won the Wolf Prize for Chemistry. The Wolf Prize is an international award which has been presented to living scientists and artists every year in Israel by the Wolf Foundation since 1978.
1999: Nobel Prize for Chemistry
Zewail also won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for pioneering femtochemistry, which is the study of chemical reactions on extremely short timescales. He also won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 1993.
2005: Nobel Peace Prize
Egyptian scientist Mohamed ElBaradei shared his Nobel Prize with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which he led.
2018: Wolf Prize for Chemistry
Omar M Yaghi, born in Jordan to a Palestinian refugee family, won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 2018 for work on metal-organic frameworks. He shared the prize with Japan’s Makoto Fujita. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) condemned his acceptance of the award because the prize is awarded by an Israeli foundation.
2023: Nobel Prize for Chemistry
Moungi Bawendi won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots. He was born in France to a Tunisian father, but based in the US.
2025: Nobel Prize for Chemistry
Yaghi also won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for developing metal-organic frameworks. These are crystalline materials with large internal cavities that can capture and store gases, harvest water from air, and trap pollutants. He shared the prize with Susumu Kitagawa from Japan and Richard Robson from Australia.
In a post on X, vaccine scientist Peter Hotez of the Texas Medical Center weighed in on historical Arab scholarship, saying, “It was the Arab scientists of the Middle Ages who kept Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen alive to hand it down in the Renaissance.”
Broadcaster Mehdi Hasan described RFK Jr’s comments as “racist” and, in a post on X, wrote: “One of the men who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry last year was a Palestinian-American, Omar Yaghi.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations called for the US health secretary to be removed. It said: “To stand on a public stage as a sitting US cabinet official and dehumanise half a billion people – and millions of Muslim and Christian Arab Americans – with fabricated, white supremacist talking points is utterly disqualifying for public office. His sweeping erasure of Arab contributions to humanity is not only maliciously false, but it also fans the flames of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate at a time when communities are already vulnerable to bigoted attacks from other public officials nationwide.”
The Democratic candidate for the US Senate has been the subject of Islamophobic attacks from Trump.
Published On 26 Oct 202626 Oct 2026
Detroit, Michigan – Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has dismissed United States President Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim attacks against him, saying that they are an attempt to move the attention away from the president’s own record.
At a news conference in Detroit on Monday, El-Sayed said Trump is trying to distract from issues that matter to Americans – including petrol prices and the war on Iran – by accusing the Democratic candidate of being a “jihadist”.
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El-Sayed called the attacks “deflections and deceptions based on no evidence”.
“They have nothing to say about solving the problems in your life. They’re not talking about you,” the Democratic candidate said of Republicans.
“They’re not talking about your gas or your groceries … They’re not talking about clean air or clean water. They’re not talking about any of the things that the government is actually supposed to solve. Why? Because Donald Trump has created those problems.”
At a rally in Michigan on Sunday, Trump unleashed repeated baseless claims against El-Sayed, accusing the Democrat of wanting to impose “Sharia law” on the country.
“He would be the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into the Senate,” Trump said. “I want him to have a metal detector.”
El-Sayed laughed off the suggestion that he may personally be a physical threat to Congress. “He knows I got those Wolverine claws,” he said, a reference to the sports teams of his alma mater, the University of Michigan.
The progressive Democrat and former public health official is locked in a close race with former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, a contest that could decide the Senate majority for the next two years.
Rogers has made unfounded allegations linking El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Hezbollah a central point of his campaign.
On Monday, El-Sayed said most Americans reject such attacks.
“There are always a few small people who want to make America small like that. You see them; they’re very loud, and they bark,” El-Sayed said.
“The vast majority of folks in this state believe in a big America. They’re open-minded. They’re big-hearted. And the story of America is those who believe in big America, overcoming the deception, the distraction, the sad attempts of the small-minded to make us small.”
He added that “Michiganders are a lot bigger than that”.
El-Sayed also addressed Trump’s statements mocking his name and misrepresenting it as “Mohamed”.
“My name and my faith are not the reason you can’t afford your gas – not the reason you can’t afford your groceries, not the reason you can’t pay your rent, your mortgage, not the reason you can’t see a doctor,” he said.
Former US President Barack Obama joined Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed at a Detroit rally ahead of key midterms. With Black residents making up about 75% of Detroit’s population, Obama denounced attempts to portray candidates as un-American over their faith or background.
Spain sanctioned by FIFA after incidents at Espanyol’s stadium in Barcelona, which staged the friendly with Egypt.
Published On 16 Oct 202616 Oct 2026
Spain have been fined $20,000 and ordered to partially close their stadium for their next friendly after supporters twice chanted Islamophobic slogans during the game against Egypt in March, FIFA said in a statement.
The sanctions relate to incidents at the RCDE Stadium near Barcelona, home of LaLiga club Espanyol, where some Spain fans chanted, “Who doesn’t jump is a Muslim” during a World Cup warm-up match which ended in a 0-0 draw.
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After the second occurrence of the chant, the stadium announcer issued a warning and the scoreboard displayed a message against discriminatory behaviour.
Spain winger Lamine Yamal, who is Muslim, condemned the chants at the time, describing them as disrespectful and intolerable and calling those responsible “ignorant and racist”.
Spanish police launched an investigation the following day, while world governing body FIFA later started disciplinary proceedings against the Spanish football federation (RFEF).
It argued that the word ‘Muslim’ was “neither insulting nor pejorative”, adding that the fans’ conduct should be assessed under FIFA’s Article 17, which covers political, ideological, religious or offensive messages, rather than Article 15, which deals with discrimination and racist abuse.
However, FIFA’s disciplinary committee rejected that argument, saying Article 15 does not require the explicit use of a slur and that a term can be discriminatory when used in context as “an insult, taunt, or marker of inferiority”.
FIFA fined the RFEF and ordered the closure of at least 15% of available seats for Spain’s next friendly.
UK mosque rebukes comission’s ‘warning’ following Palestine comments | Israel-Palestine conflict News
The Lewisham Islamic Centre accused the charity watchdog of imposing disproportionate expectations on Muslim charities.
Published On 12 Nov 202612 Nov 2026
The Lewisham Islamic Centre (LIC) in London has rejected a warning issued by the UK’s independent Charity Commission, which reprimanded the mosque for comments on Palestinian suffering made by an imam during October 2023 sermons.
“The matters raised by the Commission represent a troubling attempt to scrutinise, restrict and penalise legitimate religious worship” and “the expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people,” the mosque said in an official statement issued Wednesday.
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The statement comes after the charity watchdog accused the religious centre of including “content that was inflammatory, divisive and not in the charity’s best interests” during two separate sermons, as they issued an official warning urging the centre to “improve its handling of speakers and events hosted at the charity’s premises” on October 20.
The commission warned that if the mosque fails to “remedy the misconduct”, it may be subjected to further action.
‘Unnecessarily burdensome’
The mosque also accused the commission of imposing disproportionate expectations on Muslim charities after the warning, describing them as “unnecessarily burdensome”. The religious centre explained that a sermon, or khutbah, is an integral part of Islamic worship and often speaks to the issues affecting the wellbeing of congregations and their communities. The LIC worried that the warning suggested the commission was “entitled to dictate which subjects Imams may address in their khutbahs”.
LIC added that they are currently seeking legal advice as to the best way to move forward following the warning.
CAGE International, a London-based human rights organisation, supported the mosque, and claimed the Charity Commission showed lenience when it came to pro-Israel charities.
“The Commission’s position treats the word ‘Zionist’ as inflammatory in itself,” CAGE said on Thursday. “This merges opposition to a political ideology with hatred of a people, and places Muslim religious expression under suspicion by default.”
“The Commission has told a mosque that naming who is responsible for Palestinian suffering falls outside acceptable religious practice,” a spokesperson for CAGE said. “This is the same regulator asking for the power to remove trustees for their views,” they added, referring to a recent government consultation to expand the Charity Commission’s powers.
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Michigan US Senate race: Rogers, El-Sayed urge turnout for critical race | US Midterm Elections 2026 News
Michigan voters are casting their ballots in a charged, closely watched race that could make Democrat Abdul El-Sayed the first Muslim in the United States Senate and help decide control of the chamber.
Mike Rogers, his Republican opponent, cast his ballot at a polling station in White Lake, Michigan hours after polls opened. El-Sayed had already had his vote submitted and counted through an absentee ballot before Election Day.
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The two candidates seek to fill the seat of retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters. A final New York Times/Siena poll placed El-Sayed 11 points ahead of Rogers going into the election.
Polls opened at 7am local time (12:00 GMT) and close at 8pm (01:00 GMT on Wednesday). If the race is close, it may not be called until later on Wednesday. The US Department of Justice has announced that election monitors will be present at the polls in Michigan and all 50 other states, a first in US history.
El-Sayed, a Muslim born to Egyptian parents, is the former head of Detroit’s health department and has campaigned on progressive policies such as Medicare for All.
Rogers, a former congressman and close ally of US President Donald Trump, is seeking to come back after a narrow loss to a Democrat in a 2024 Senate race.
Democrats need to gain four seats in Tuesday’s midterm elections to wrest back the Senate from Republicans and rein in Trump. The race is also seen as a test of whether a progressive who openly criticises Israel can win in a swing state.
Both candidates made a final push on social media as voting got under way.
“It’s time. It’s up to us to show the country what’s possible. The world is watching,” El-Sayed wrote, sharing an upbeat campaign video that features former US President Barack Obama.
Rogers posted a video that featured interviews with supporters, one of whom called El-Sayed an “extremist”.
“We have a state to save”, the post read.
Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer gave a firm endorsement of El-Sayed after casting his own ballot in New York’s race.
“There are millions of Michiganders whose number one issue is getting their costs down,” said Schumer.
“Abdul El-Sayed is … talking to the people about those issues and doing things about them … He is going to win tonight because he’s talking about what Michiganders care about.”
‘One vote’
The El-Sayed campaign’s final days were overshadowed by a rift with Congresswoman Haley Stevens, a fellow Democrat whom El-Sayed narrowly defeated in a primary election in August.
On Sunday, Stevens endorsed Rogers, saying she was “choosing country over hate” and capping off a weeks-long row about El-Sayed’s opposition to US support for Israel.
Stevens is a staunch supporter of Israel, and the pro-Israel lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spent more than $30m backing her against El-Sayed. A majority of her large donors lined up to support Rogers after her loss, channeling $9m into a Republican group that supports him, according to The New York Times.
El-Sayed, by contrast, has accused Israel of genocide in Gaza and argued that US aid to Israel would be better spent at home.
Asked by NewsNation on her way in to vote for Rogers whether her change in support was worth it, Stevens replied: “Absolutely. Voting is always worth it, right?”
Senate leader Schumer, who had initially backed Stevens, was asked whether her defection could hand the election to Republicans. “Haley Stevens is one vote,” he replied.
Islamophobic attacks
El-Sayed, the Michigan-born son of Egyptian immigrants, has faced persistent attacks on his faith. Republican Party ads have sought to link him to “terrorism” and radicalism, with Trump joining in the inflammatory rhetoric.
The US president has repeatedly called El-Sayed a “jihadist” and a “nasty guy”, mocking his name and repeating an unfounded, widely circulated Republican claim that he belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Hours before polls opened, Trump once again took aim at El-Sayed, this time in a post on his Truth Social platform.
“Abdul El-Sayed Hates Jews and Hates Blacks. Don’t feel bad, he also Hates Whites. Only fools would vote for him in the Michigan race for the U.S. Senate! He will, 100%, do you in! VOTE FOR MIKE ROGERS,” Trump wrote.
The US president also mentioned El-Sayed in a Fox News interview early on Election Day, when he said annual US financial aid to Israel should stop at the end of 2026.
“Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayed when they [Israel] don’t need it?” he said.
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Trump leans into Islamophobia and conspiracy in last-ditch campaign rallies | US Midterm Elections 2026 News
Trump attacks Muslim politicians Abdul El-Sayed and Ilhan Omar in his two last rallies on the campaign trail.
United States President Donald Trump has doubled down on Islamophobic rhetoric and conspiracy theories about the Democratic Party at campaign events in Iowa and Kansas, days before the US votes in crucial midterm elections that will decide who controls Congress during Trump’s last two years as president.
The president repeated his claim that Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic US Senate hopeful from Michigan, is a “jihadist” at both rallies on Sunday, and joked that if he gets elected, the Senate will have to install metal detectors to scan him before he enters the building.
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“We’ll have a hundred senators, and most of them will go directly [into the Senate]… We’re gonna have to get a special metal detector for Abdul,” Trump said, drawing laughter from the crowd.
He also repeated unfounded claims that El-Sayed is a member of the transnational Muslim Brotherhood, branches of which the US has deemed foreign “terrorist” organisations.
At both events, Trump repeatedly urged his supporters to make sure they go out and vote, asking them to “pretend I’m on the ballot”, as he sought to energise Republican voters ahead of what polling suggests could be a bruising election for the party.
The two rallies were cancelled last week but were suddenly rescheduled. They will be Trump’s final travelling events before the election.
Both speeches were interrupted multiple times by hecklers.
In Iowa, the president said he would “love” Democratic Representative Haley Stevens, who lost to Abdul El-Sayed in the primaries, to switch parties, after she endorsed El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, Mike Rogers.
At both rallies, he took aim at US Representative for Minnesota Ilhan Omar, whom Trump claims, without evidence, was previously married to her brother and had children with him.
In Kansas, Trump attacked the Democratic Senate hopeful Adam Hamilton, a church pastor, for his support for trans rights, and called him a “stiff” who reads his sermons from teleprompters.
The US-Israel war on Iran, the cost of living, immigration, perceived media bias against him, and the administration of former President Joe Biden also featured heavily in Trump’s two speeches.
Two critical races
While Iowa and Kansas are represented mostly by Republican lawmakers, polling suggests Democrats could flip both states.
Kansas has five federal congressional seats up for election in the midterms: one Senate seat and all four House seats. The state last elected a Democratic senator in 1932.
In Iowa, the Senate race is too close to call, but polling suggests that two Iowan state representative seats up for grabs are leaning Democrat.
The US will vote in the midterm elections on November 3.
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US Muslims concerned but resilient as ‘hate’ attacks target Abdul El-Sayed | US Midterm Elections 2026 News
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.
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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.
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US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib condemns anti-Muslim election rhetoric | Islamophobia
US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has condemned anti-Muslim election rhetoric, warning of its impact on the community during a press conference in Michigan. Tlaib said the hateful political adverts on television have also affected her own family.
Published On 28 Oct 202628 Oct 2026
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US’s RFK Jr claims Arabs ‘don’t produce science’: Why he’s very, very wrong | US Midterm Elections 2026 News
United States Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has sparked uproar with comments he has made denying Arab contributions to mathematics, science and literature.
In a high-voltage rant on Monday, the US health secretary said, “There’s five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don’t produce science. They don’t win the Nobel Prize. They don’t win the Fields Prize. They don’t win the Wolf Prize. They don’t produce literature.”
RFK Jr, who has been involved in anti-vaccine campaigns and has promoted a debunked theory linking vaccines to autism, made the comments during a US election campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan while supporting Republican nominee Mike Rogers, who is up against Arab-American Democrat nominee Abdul El-Sayed, in a tightly contested battle for Michigan’s Senate seat in next week’s midterm elections.
Critics said the comments were racist, Islamophobic and factually inaccurate, pointing to modern and historic Arab innovation in multiple fields.
Here’s how Arabs have made vital contributions to the human understanding of maths, science and literature through the centuries.
Arab contributions to maths, science and humanities
The period known as the Islamic Golden Age, from around 750 AD to 1258 AD, produced many key Arab contributions to medicine at a time when Europe was said to be in its Dark Ages. During this time, Arabic was the language of science and scholarship.
1st-4th centuries: The numerals 0-9, which originated in ancient India, were adopted by Arab mathematicians who spread them across the world. They displaced Roman numerals as a more advanced number system in mathematics.
8th century: Arab and Persian mathematicians were studying the ancient Indian concept of zero in mathematics in Baghdad, long before the Europeans. The number zero was crucial to the development of mathematics – but was absent from widely used Roman numerals in Europe.
813-833: The Arab mathematician Muḥammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi – one of those studying the number 0 – is often referred to as the “father of algebra” as he was the first to treat the method as a separate mathematical discipline in his work, Al-Jabr. This method provided the first linear and quadratic equations, still used as a core part of mathematical study today.
965-1040: Ibn al-Haytham, known as the “father of modern optics”, explained the role that light entering the eye plays in human vision. He was born in Basra in Iraq, but spent most of his working life in Cairo attending to noble families.
936-1013: Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, called “the father of modern surgery”, was considered the greatest surgeon in the Middle Ages. He wrote a 30-volume encyclopaedia detailing medical practices and designed and illustrated many surgical instruments. Born in Azahara, in Andalusia, he was known as Abulcasis in Europe.
9th century: Fatima al-Fihri founded the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco. It is often cited as the oldest continually operating university.
1213-1288: Ibn al-Nafis described pulmonary circulation – the process by which blood passes through the lungs – several centuries before Europeans understood it. He wrote more than 110 volumes of work on surgery, ophthalmology and philosophy while working as a chief physician in Egypt.
915-965: Abu al-Tayyib al-Mutanabbi, regarded as the greatest poet in the Arabic language, was Yemeni and grew up immersed in Bedouin Arabic culture. He wrote in classical Arabic and many of his verses became sayings used in everyday Arabic.
1100-1165: Muhammad al-Idrisi was a geographer known for making the Tabula Rogeriana, one of the most accurate and detailed medieval world maps, and a high point of Islamic geography. He was born in Ceuta in Morocco.
Prize-winning Arabs
In more modern times, RFK Jr’s assertion that Arabs do not win Nobel prizes for science and literature is very far from the truth. Here are some of the highlights:
1960: Nobel Prize for Medicine
Peter Medawar won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for work on for work on acquired immune tolerance, which underpins organ transplantation. He was born in Brazil to a Lebanese father.
1966: The Fields Medal
Michael Atiyah won the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award for mathematics, in 1966. He was born in London to a Lebanese father and Scottish mother. Educated in Egypt, he spent much of his childhood in Cairo and Khartoum.
1988: Nobel Prize for Literature
Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his body of work, including the Cairo Trilogy, which the Swedish Academy said formed “an Arabic narrative art that applies to all mankind”. He is still the only winner of the prize who wrote in Arabic.
1990: Nobel Prize for Chemistry
Elias James Corey won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for developing retrosynthetic analysis. He is an American of Lebanese descent.
1993: Wolf Prize for Chemistry
Egyptian Ahmed Zewail won the Wolf Prize for Chemistry. The Wolf Prize is an international award which has been presented to living scientists and artists every year in Israel by the Wolf Foundation since 1978.
1999: Nobel Prize for Chemistry
Zewail also won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for pioneering femtochemistry, which is the study of chemical reactions on extremely short timescales. He also won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 1993.
2005: Nobel Peace Prize
Egyptian scientist Mohamed ElBaradei shared his Nobel Prize with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which he led.
2018: Wolf Prize for Chemistry
Omar M Yaghi, born in Jordan to a Palestinian refugee family, won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 2018 for work on metal-organic frameworks. He shared the prize with Japan’s Makoto Fujita. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) condemned his acceptance of the award because the prize is awarded by an Israeli foundation.
2023: Nobel Prize for Chemistry
Moungi Bawendi won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots. He was born in France to a Tunisian father, but based in the US.
2025: Nobel Prize for Chemistry
Yaghi also won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for developing metal-organic frameworks. These are crystalline materials with large internal cavities that can capture and store gases, harvest water from air, and trap pollutants. He shared the prize with Susumu Kitagawa from Japan and Richard Robson from Australia.
In a post on X, vaccine scientist Peter Hotez of the Texas Medical Center weighed in on historical Arab scholarship, saying, “It was the Arab scientists of the Middle Ages who kept Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen alive to hand it down in the Renaissance.”
Broadcaster Mehdi Hasan described RFK Jr’s comments as “racist” and, in a post on X, wrote: “One of the men who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry last year was a Palestinian-American, Omar Yaghi.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations called for the US health secretary to be removed. It said: “To stand on a public stage as a sitting US cabinet official and dehumanise half a billion people – and millions of Muslim and Christian Arab Americans – with fabricated, white supremacist talking points is utterly disqualifying for public office. His sweeping erasure of Arab contributions to humanity is not only maliciously false, but it also fans the flames of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate at a time when communities are already vulnerable to bigoted attacks from other public officials nationwide.”
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‘Deflections’: Abdul El-Sayed responds to Trump’s anti-Muslim attacks | US Midterm Elections 2026 News
The Democratic candidate for the US Senate has been the subject of Islamophobic attacks from Trump.
Published On 26 Oct 202626 Oct 2026
Detroit, Michigan – Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has dismissed United States President Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim attacks against him, saying that they are an attempt to move the attention away from the president’s own record.
At a news conference in Detroit on Monday, El-Sayed said Trump is trying to distract from issues that matter to Americans – including petrol prices and the war on Iran – by accusing the Democratic candidate of being a “jihadist”.
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El-Sayed called the attacks “deflections and deceptions based on no evidence”.
“They have nothing to say about solving the problems in your life. They’re not talking about you,” the Democratic candidate said of Republicans.
“They’re not talking about your gas or your groceries … They’re not talking about clean air or clean water. They’re not talking about any of the things that the government is actually supposed to solve. Why? Because Donald Trump has created those problems.”
At a rally in Michigan on Sunday, Trump unleashed repeated baseless claims against El-Sayed, accusing the Democrat of wanting to impose “Sharia law” on the country.
“He would be the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into the Senate,” Trump said. “I want him to have a metal detector.”
El-Sayed laughed off the suggestion that he may personally be a physical threat to Congress. “He knows I got those Wolverine claws,” he said, a reference to the sports teams of his alma mater, the University of Michigan.
The progressive Democrat and former public health official is locked in a close race with former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, a contest that could decide the Senate majority for the next two years.
Rogers has made unfounded allegations linking El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Hezbollah a central point of his campaign.
On Monday, El-Sayed said most Americans reject such attacks.
“There are always a few small people who want to make America small like that. You see them; they’re very loud, and they bark,” El-Sayed said.
“The vast majority of folks in this state believe in a big America. They’re open-minded. They’re big-hearted. And the story of America is those who believe in big America, overcoming the deception, the distraction, the sad attempts of the small-minded to make us small.”
He added that “Michiganders are a lot bigger than that”.
El-Sayed also addressed Trump’s statements mocking his name and misrepresenting it as “Mohamed”.
“My name and my faith are not the reason you can’t afford your gas – not the reason you can’t afford your groceries, not the reason you can’t pay your rent, your mortgage, not the reason you can’t see a doctor,” he said.
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Obama joins El-Sayed in Michigan rally cry before key midterms | Elections
Former US President Barack Obama joined Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed at a Detroit rally ahead of key midterms. With Black residents making up about 75% of Detroit’s population, Obama denounced attempts to portray candidates as un-American over their faith or background.
Published On 25 Oct 202625 Oct 2026
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Spain punished by FIFA for Islamophobic chants during Egypt friendly | Football
Spain sanctioned by FIFA after incidents at Espanyol’s stadium in Barcelona, which staged the friendly with Egypt.
Published On 16 Oct 202616 Oct 2026
Spain have been fined $20,000 and ordered to partially close their stadium for their next friendly after supporters twice chanted Islamophobic slogans during the game against Egypt in March, FIFA said in a statement.
The sanctions relate to incidents at the RCDE Stadium near Barcelona, home of LaLiga club Espanyol, where some Spain fans chanted, “Who doesn’t jump is a Muslim” during a World Cup warm-up match which ended in a 0-0 draw.
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After the second occurrence of the chant, the stadium announcer issued a warning and the scoreboard displayed a message against discriminatory behaviour.
Spain winger Lamine Yamal, who is Muslim, condemned the chants at the time, describing them as disrespectful and intolerable and calling those responsible “ignorant and racist”.
Spanish police launched an investigation the following day, while world governing body FIFA later started disciplinary proceedings against the Spanish football federation (RFEF).
It argued that the word ‘Muslim’ was “neither insulting nor pejorative”, adding that the fans’ conduct should be assessed under FIFA’s Article 17, which covers political, ideological, religious or offensive messages, rather than Article 15, which deals with discrimination and racist abuse.
However, FIFA’s disciplinary committee rejected that argument, saying Article 15 does not require the explicit use of a slur and that a term can be discriminatory when used in context as “an insult, taunt, or marker of inferiority”.
FIFA fined the RFEF and ordered the closure of at least 15% of available seats for Spain’s next friendly.
Al Jazeera has contacted the RFEF for comment.
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