Centre for the Study of Organised Hate finds posts naming El-Sayed averaged 3,099 a day between Aug 4-10
Abdul El-Sayed, winner of Michigan US Democratic primary, speaks during a press conference in Detroit, Michigan. — REUTERS
Anti-Muslim hate speech targeting Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed surged twentyfold following his Aug 4 win in the Democratic primary, according to a new study.
Findings of the Washington, DC-based Centre for the Study of Organised Hate, as shared with Anadolu, found that posts naming El-Sayed along with anti-Muslim bigotry averaged 155 a day between June 1 and Aug 3, then rose to 3,099 a day on Aug 4-10, soaring 1,895%.
Those seven days accounted for 56.7% of all 38,280 Islamophobic posts targeting El-Sayed tracked since Jan 1, with volume peaking on Aug 5 at 6,923 posts in a single day.
Separately, the centre tracked 409,640 posts promoting anti-Muslim bigotry on the US social media company X in the country between June 1 and Aug 10, with the platform’s highest single-day total of the summer recorded on Aug 5, at 11,883 posts.
READ: How the new generation of left-wing US media is powering progressive candidates
The largest theme in the surge, the centre said, involved posts describing El-Sayed as “an Islamic jihadist” and falsely linking him to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood. Other posts claimed he intended to impose “Islamic law”, recast campaign donations from Muslim groups as “terrorist financing” or combined anti-Muslim conspiracy theories of a so-called “Islamist and communist” taking over the Democratic Party.
Some posts invoked the 2001 terrorist attacks to frame El-Sayed as foreign and hostile to the US, while others called for “remigration”, meaning the mass removal of Muslims from Western countries.
The centre said the pattern closely mirrored the rhetoric it documented during Zohran Mamdani’s successful run in last year’s New York City mayoral election, pointing to a “stable repertoire” of tropes that are activated when a Muslim candidate becomes competitive or wins office.
Self-described ‘capitalist who understands how capitalism works’
El-Sayed, a progressive former public health official, narrowly defeated Rep Haley Stevens in last week’s primary in a blow to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which spent more than $30 million backing Stevens.
He will face Republican Mike Rogers in November for the seat being vacated by retiring Sen Gary Peters, in a contest seen as pivotal to Democrats’ hopes of retaking the Senate.
His campaign has centred on affordability, Medicare for All, and getting money out of politics. El-Sayed has also called for ending unconditional US military aid to Israel and other countries.
“I want to get money out of politics, put money in your pocket, and pass Medicare for all,” he recently told CNN, dismissing President Donald Trump’s attacks on him as a distraction from the country’s economic problems.
Trump has called El-Sayed “full of sh-t”, a “radical left socialist” and a “communist”, saying that he “hates Jews and Israel”.
Attacking corporate monopolies, El-Sayed said in a debate last month: “I’m not a socialist. I’m just a capitalist who understands how capitalism works.”
READ MORE: Abdul El-Sayed wins Michigan Senate primary
Vice President JD Vance also sarcastically referred to El-Sayed as “President Abdul El-Sayed” during a White House roundtable last week.
Asked during an interview with Democracy Now!, a US-based independent news programme, what it would mean to become the first Muslim senator in US history, El-Sayed said: “I don’t think that much about being the first of anything. I just want to be a really great senator for my state.”
“But I do think about what it would mean about what our country is. You got people like Donald Trump and JD Vance and Mike Rogers, who want to define America as being smaller than she really is. I know America is big. It’s open-hearted. It is thoughtful,” he added.
