Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed directly solicited support for his campaign inside Islamic centers whose imams and guest speakers called America the “the House of Shaitan [Satan]” and urged Allah to “take the worst revenge upon” Zionists, according to a review of their videotaped services.

Experts said the video evidence, first uncovered by the Middle East Forum and verified by Just the News, could open the door to potential investigations into the nonprofit status of places of worship and provide a stark reminder to voters in the final days of the 2026 election about El-Sayed's ties to other controversial activists, who include Hasan Piker. 

El-Sayed is locked in a close contest with former Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., for Michigan's open Senate seat. The contest is expected to be one of the most competitive of the cycle. 

Throughout the contest, El-Sayed has taken flak for his ties to Piker, a prominent Twitch streamer who has said America “deserved” 9/11, among other sensational statements. President Donald Trump has called El-Sayed a “terrorist sympathizer.”

The El-Sayed campaign did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News, and has denied his familial relationships to the Muslim Brotherhood and to radical Islam in general, with supporters such as former President Obama calling the issue "Islamophobic."

In March before the Democratic primary, El-Sayed visited the Islamic Center of Detroit, a nonprofit organization that offers both Muslim religious services and engages in charity work in the community. 

El-Sayed was welcomed to the pulpit by one of the mosque’s leaders during a Ramadan prayer service, during which he solicited signatures from the congregation so that he could qualify for the Michigan Democratic primary, according to a recording reviewed by Just the News.

The host introduced El-Sayed as “our beloved brother Dr. Abdulrahman,” using his full first name, and El-Sayed spoke to the room in a livestreamed meeting and asked the congregation for their support. 

Meeting ended with call for God to take “revenge” upon the Zionists

“I have to get on the ballot to be able to get your vote, inshallah [God willing]. So my team is here in the back. You’ll see us on the outside [...] If you’re a registered voter in the state of Michigan, we need your signature to get on the ballot, so I ask that you’ll give us a signature,” El-Sayed told the congregation. “Please don’t leave here without doing that.”

Later in the same Ramadan livestream, a leader reads the closing supplication in Arabic, which called for God to take “revenge” upon the Zionists and to foil their plans. It is not clear whether El-Sayed was still in attendance when this closing prayer was sung.

“O our Lord, the Zionists have spread corruption in the land. Your forbearance has deceived them, so show them Your power, O Compeller. They killed our brothers and sisters, so take the worst revenge upon them,” the leader sang, according to the video.  

“Lie in wait for them, our Lord. Raise no banner for them in the lands of the Muslims [...] and foil their plans in every time and place,” he continued. 

The Arabic language prayer was translated independently by the Middle East Forum and confirmed by Just the News using Google’s translation application. 

The Islamic Center of Detroit did not respond to a message submitted to its online contact portal.

Lawmaker, experts raise legal concerns over charity laws

El-Sayed's whistle-stop political tour through Muslim nonprofits is already raising legal questions.

Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, asked the IRS late last month to investigate one Michigan nonprofit that hosted a fundraiser for El-Sayed. “The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) reportedly engaged in prohibited activity on behalf of Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed,” Self wrote on X . “I sent a letter to @SecScottBessent requesting the IRS investigate and complete a full review of ISNA’s tax-exempt status."

J. Christian Adams, a former top Justice Department civil rights and elections lawyer who now runs the Public Interest Legal Foundation, told Just the News that the El-Sayed video clips raise serious legal issues since religious organizations that enjoy 501(c)3 tax-exempt status are prohibited from directly advocating the election or defeat of federal candidates.

"You get a c3, or you get a religious exemption from paying taxes because you don't engage in partisan politics. But if you're bringing in federal candidates and encouraging your worshippers to vote for these federal candidates in the mosque, that's a problem. You're jeopardizing your tax status," Adams said,

Gregg Roman, the executive director of the Middle East Forum, told Just the News his group reviewed video footage from three dozen Muslim mosques and centers in Michigan and found 938 "extremist" statements. He said some of the groups that hosted such speakers also received taxpayer funds.

"We found $45 million in taxpayer funding that went to nine of these institutions that we identified," Roman said. "And we also were able to find 41 officials from local, county, state, and even the federal government who went to community events at these centers. So one day they're hosting the mayor of Dearborn; the next, the speaker's calling for killing Jews. It's just a juxtaposition that shouldn't work in our democracy."

Islamic Center of Detroit speaker labeled America ‘the House of [Satan]’ and said country was founded on Islamic tradition

Rhetoric calling on “Allah” to commit violence against Zionist Jews and likewise praising terrorists appeared other times at the Islamic Center of Detroit, which hosted El-Sayed and cooperated with his campaign drive. 

For example, in March 2024, less than a year after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel that launched a war in Gaza, a religious leader said there, “O Allah, grant victory to your soldiers, the mujahideen, everywhere. O Allah, grant victory to our oppressed brothers in Gaza,” according to a translation provided by the Middle East Forum.  

That same month, leaders of the Islamic Center called on “Allah” to “count [the Zionist aggressors] one by one and kill them all, scattering them, and leave not one of them” and “Tear them apart with every tearing with which You have torn Your enemies, in support of Your allies.” The leaders of that same center would later host El-Sayed, and allow him to use the congregation to collect signatures to get on the Democratic ballot.  

In January 2025, Dr. Zulfiqar Shah, an Islamic scholar, told the congregation that as Muslims in the United States they were living in the “House of Shaitan,” or House of Satan. 

“So my respected brothers and sisters, I request you, as Muslims living here in America, in the house of Shaitan [...]” Dr. Shah said, before urging them to “reclaim the narrative” and show how the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were ultimately based on Islamic tradition. 

Shah is no stranger to controversy. In 2009, the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) reported that in 2001 Shah — then president of the Islamic Circle of North America -- led a chant at its annual conference saying "Our way, our way, is jihad, jihad," and added that Shah advocated violence in Kashmir. A search by Just the News does not disclose any retraction or correction to that IPT article.

“I’m expecting some rough time during the next four years, so it is important for us to be able and ready to say no, this is not a Christian country, this was not built by the judeo-christian tradition. It was built actually against it. It was built upon the Islamic ideology,” Shah added. 

MECCA hosted El-Sayed after its founder said "the Zionists are in full control" of U.S. government

Eleven days before the primary, the imam of another Michigan Islamic center used his Friday sermon to urge worshipers to send El-Sayed to the Senate. 

Sayed Saleh Qazwini founded the Muslim Educational Community Center of America (MECCA), a tax-exempt nonprofit in Canton, in 2022. On July 24, he told the congregation that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and “the Zionists” control American politics, then turned to the Senate race, according to the center’s livestream.

“Who was it that pushed for the war with Iraq? Who was it that pushed for the war with Libya? Who is it that pushed for the wars all over the Middle East? AIPAC and the Zionists that are in full control of the government here. Full control of the government here,” Qazwini said.

“The only way to stop this is to remove from power, to elect to power those that are not associated with Zionism, those that are not associated with AIPAC,” he continued.

Minutes later, Qazwini, acting as MECCA's imam, described and named El-Sayed, urging his congregation to back him.

“One of the things that we have to do is that we have to participate in the elections,” Qazwini said. “Today in Michigan, we have a chance at bringing the first Muslim anti-war senator that does not take money from foreign lobbies. And this is Abdul El-Sayed, who is running in the primary.”

“AIPAC has spent over $30 million so far on the election here. Meaning that this is the most expensive election for them because they know there’s a big chance that this man will win. And this is why we have to all come out in numbers,” he added.

A week later, Qazwini told worshippers that “it’s mandatory to go and to elect brother Abdul El-Sayed because at least we know he’s a Muslim,” according to a clip published by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

MECCA did not respond to an email request for comment from Just the News. 

Qazwini reminded his congregation about elections at Friday prayers on Aug. 7, three days after El-Sayed won the primary by fewer than 14,000 votes. He told the congregation that AIPAC had spent “70 to 80 million” on the primary “just so Abdul El-Sayed does not get elected,” and tied that spending to Israel’s wars, according to the center’s livestream.

“Today Israel and the Zionists, they killed hundreds and thousands of children. They bombed hundreds and thousands of homes, and that is something that is not popular. And you can’t come and pay people money to view something unpopular as popular,” the imam said.

Muslim religious leaders invoked Gaza to stump for El-Sayed

“This is just the primary. There is the general election, and now they’re probably going to be spending much more,” Qazwini added. “But as long as people are alert, as long as people are awake, as long as people participate in the election, people go out and vote and exercise their right to vote, then they will not be able to steal the election.”

El-Sayed also appeared alongside Qazwini in August at a campaign-season event at Christ Episcopal Church in Dearborn, Michigan. 

Prayers asking God to punish Jews and “Zionists” come up again and again at MECCA’s services, according to a catalog of 27 statements the Middle East Forum compiled from the center’s own videos.

In July 2024, an imam closed a sermon by praying for “our brothers, the mujahideen, in Gaza and in southern Lebanon, in Yemen, in Iraq.” Those are the fronts where Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran-backed Iraqi militias were fighting Israel at the time. 

El-Sayed associate prays in public: "O Allah, take the worst vengeance upon the Jews"

The State Department designates Hamas and Hezbollah as foreign terrorist organizations, and it redesignated the Houthis in 2025.

“O Allah, send down Your anger, Your vengeance, and Your punishment upon the Jews, upon these criminal Zionists. O Allah, take the worst vengeance upon them, O Allah,” the cleric said, according to a translation provided by the Middle East Forum.

The same imam prayed in similar terms in June 2026, less than two months before the primary: “O Allah, take revenge on Israel and those who help it. O Allah, send down upon them Your wrath and punishment this very hour.”

Qazwini labeled the late supreme leader of Iran a martyr. On March 1, 2026, he led the congregation in a prayer for the soul of Iran’s supreme leader, saying that “Sayyid al-Khamenei [...] became a shaheed [martyr] in the way of Allah.”