Heckled, Branded Terrorist, He Still Won. Abdul El-Sayed's Viral Moment

Washington: Viral clips from election campaign trails often cement either the key issues or candidates' responses to them. That's exactly what happened when Michigan's senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive Democrat, was heckled at the town hall, where a young man demanded he disavow the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world's oldest and most influential Islamist movements, which many consider a terrorist group. In the video of the interaction, which is once again going viral on social media, El-Sayed could be seen quickly answering, "Sure, yeah, absolutely," before he asked the heckler, who identified himself as "Tommy", about the thinking behind it. Over nearly five minutes, El-Sayed pointed out how Tommy's question carried an implication of "dual loyalty". "You're asking the question because implicitly you assume that I'll have dual loyalties, right? " El-Sayed, who is a Muslim, asked. He then paraphrased former US President John F Kennedy's famous line about his Catholic faith and him being allegiant to the pope. "I'm not running to be a Muslim senator. I'm running for the U.S. Senate and happen to be Muslim," El-Sayed said.Later, the man who heckled El-Sayed was identified as Thomas Teepell, a former aide to the Republican senator Josh Hawley. Teepell's staff records show he worked with Hawley till February before joining Republican Philip Sarnecki's Kansas gubernatorial campaign as political director. The Islamophobic CampaignBefore Abdul El-Sayed could make history as the first Muslim elected to the US Senate, he endured what critics called one of the most overtly Islamophobic campaigns in modern US politics.US President Donald Trump branded him a jihadist and compared him to the September 11 hijackers. His Republican opponent suggested he had ties to terrorists and questioned his loyalty to America. Campaign mailers warned that if he were elected, Abdul El-Sayed would bring sharia law to Michigan. He won anyway. The 42-year-old Michigan-born Egyptian American who has a medical degree and formerly served as Detroit's health director ran as a progressive focused on healthcare and the cost of living. He rose from a double-digit defeat eight years ago in the state's Democratic gubernatorial election to an upset victory of an establishment-backed candidate in the primary after being outspent by tens of millions. The Response El-Sayed said his campaign proved that "old-fashioned politics can work if you're willing to do the work."He cast his victory in midterm elections as a rebuke to such rhetoric, ‌accusing his Republican opponent Mike Rogers of running what he called a historically ugly, hate-based campaign."You chose hate, and Michigan chose hope," El-Sayed said in his victory speech. He said victory is "not the success" and that "the success is what you're able to do with the seat.""I do believe we need new leadership, and I think people are hungry for it," he added.