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Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, said he felt religiously obligated to follow Sharia-compliant practices in a resurfaced 2009 interview with The New York Times.
"Ultimately, the question is, when I die and I stand before God and go through everything I did in my life, I don’t want to say I did it the easy way instead of the Shariah-compliant way," El-Sayed told the Times. "Not because of fear but because of obligation."
El-Sayed, enrolled in medical school at the time, was discussing his decision to seek out a Sharia-compliant mortgage for a condo he was purchasing in the college town of Ann Arbor, Michigan.
REPUBLICANS GET THE DEMOCRAT THEY WANTED AS SOCIALIST ABDUL EL-SAYED WINS MICHIGAN SENATE PRIMARY
Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive candidate in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan, films a social media video at a pool party for content creators supporting his campaign, Monday, Aug. 3, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Sharia law generally prohibits adherents from taking out loans bearing interest. A popular alternative to mortgages among Muslim Americans is long-term payment plans that add additional value to the purchase price of a home in lieu of charging interest.
In addition to prohibiting interest, Sharia law also traditionally prescribed death for people who leave Islam, placed strict restrictions on what women can do, and allowed child marriage.
Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed speaks after a radio appearance at Dr. Horace Sheffield's GOTV Community Rally on Aug. 1, 2026, in Detroit, Mich. El-Sayed holds a 15-point lead against Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) according to a recent poll. (Getty Images)
"Abdul believes in the separation of church and state," campaign spokeswoman Roxie Richner told the Washington Free Beacon, which first reported on the resurfaced comments. "While he personally lives by the rules of his faith, as many Americans of various faiths do, Abdul opposes any effort by any religious community to write their faith laws into the laws of our country."
El-Sayed has spoken out against bans on Sharia law, arguing that such efforts are rooted in white supremacy.
MICHIGAN SENATE RACE: EL-SAYED’S TIES TO EXTREMIST FUEL ANTISEMITISM CONCERNS AMONG JEWISH VOTERS
Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive candidate in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan, talks poolside with streamer Hasan Piker at a party for content creators supporting his campaign, Monday, Aug. 3, 2026, in Detroit. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo)
"The state of Oklahoma voted in a referendum to amend the constitution to ban Shariah law. What does that mean? I don’t know. And yet the voters banned it anyway," he said in 2022. "The same exact forces that drove Native peoples from their land two centuries ago, destroyed Black Wall Street a century ago, bombed a building decades ago, and tried to ban Sharia law not a decade ago, those forces are alive and well today."
"The reason I wanted to go all the way back to the 1830s is because you can’t understand a Shariah ban without understanding the Trail of Tears. You can’t understand the efforts to uproot Muslim Americans without understanding the Tulsa massacre. You cannot understand the challenges we face today without understanding white supremacy," he added.
Though El-Sayed generally takes progressive stances on social issues, he has also maintained associations with multiple religious figures linked to Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, which Farrakhan leads. Farrakhan has made a number of controversial statements over the years, including calling Jews "termites" and suggesting that White people are not fully evolved.
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The El-Sayed campaign did not respond to a request for comment when reached by Fox News Digital on Wednesday.
