Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is facing renewed scrutiny after a 2009 interview with The New York Times resurfaced in which he said it was his religious “obligation” to follow Sharia law throughout his life, according to a report by Andrew Kerr of the Washington Free Beacon.
The Times interviewed El-Sayed when he was a 24-year-old Rhodes scholar and medical student buying his first home in Ann Arbor through a Sharia-compliant mortgage. Explaining why he chose that financing option, El-Sayed said his decision was rooted in his faith.
“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. Not because of fear but because of obligation,” El-Sayed said.
The comments have taken on new attention after El-Sayed narrowly won last week’s Democratic primary for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat.
Sharia, or Islamic religious law, encompasses a wide range of religious principles governing daily life for many Muslims. Among its financial teachings is a prohibition on paying or collecting interest, leading some lenders to offer Sharia-compliant mortgages that are structured differently from conventional home loans.
According to Kerr’s report, El-Sayed has generally spoken about his faith in broader terms while campaigning for office. In a 2025 interview with Religion News Service, he said his faith “orients me to try and be a better person” and to “treat people — all people — with dignity and humanity and respect.”
Questions about Sharia, described by the Beacon as El-Sayed’s “sacred obligation,” have followed him before.
During his unsuccessful 2018 gubernatorial campaign, he disputed claims that he had described himself as “Sharia-compliant” during an interview with conservative journalist Laura Loomer before ending the interview.
Kerr also pointed to footage from the documentary “How To Fix A Primary,” which chronicled El-Sayed’s 2018 campaign. In one scene, El-Sayed tells filmmakers to avoid filming a bookshelf in his home that contained the Quran and several books on Islam.
“You’re going to want to not get these things in the shot,” El-Sayed said. “We’re trying to keep the shot secular.”
According to the Free Beacon, the bookshelf included “A Thematic Commentary on the Qur’an” by Sheikh Mohammed al-Ghazali, a Muslim Brotherhood member whose past statements and courtroom testimony in Egypt have drawn controversy.
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El-Sayed’s campaign told the Washington Free Beacon that his personal religious beliefs do not influence his views on government.
“Abdul believes in the separation of church and state,” campaign spokeswoman Roxie Richner said. “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.”
The statement echoes El-Sayed’s earlier comments to Religion News Service, where he said he wants to “protect the kind of America where everybody can pray how they choose to pray, or choose not to pray at all.”
The Free Beacon also highlighted a 2022 speech before the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in which El-Sayed criticized efforts to ban Sharia law in the state, comparing them to other historic injustices.
“You cannot understand the challenges we face today without understanding white supremacy,” El-Sayed said. “I don’t have to tell you that 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, that those forces are alive and well today.”
The Free Beacon also cited a 2006 Michigan Daily profile describing El-Sayed as a “particularly devout” Muslim in a story about his relationship with his wife, Sarah Jukaku.
The resurfaced New York Times interview is the latest piece of El-Sayed’s past to reemerge as Republicans and conservative media intensify their scrutiny of the Democratic nominee ahead of the general election.
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