By Lucretia Hughes Klucken
OKLAHOMA CITY — A resurfaced 2022 speech by Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is drawing renewed attention after he linked Oklahoma’s attempt to prohibit courts from considering Sharia law with some of the darkest events in the state’s history, including the Trail of Tears, the Tulsa Race Massacre and the Oklahoma City bombing.
El-Sayed made the remarks during an October 2022 event hosted by the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, commonly known as CAIR. Video of the speech has circulated again as El-Sayed campaigns for an open U.S. Senate seat in Michigan. PolitiFact
“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,” El-Sayed told the audience. PolitiFact
El-Sayed then made the connection even more explicitly.
“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,” El-Sayed said. “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.” PolitiFact
The remarks put four dramatically different events into what El-Sayed presented as a common historical context involving discrimination and white supremacy.
The Trail of Tears followed the federal government’s forced removal of Native American tribes from their ancestral lands during the 1830s. Thousands died during the removals.
The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre occurred when a white mob attacked Tulsa’s prosperous Black Greenwood District, killing residents and destroying homes and businesses in an area widely known as Black Wall Street.
The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was carried out by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, anti-government extremists whose attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building killed 168 people.
Oklahoma’s Sharia dispute, by contrast, originated at the ballot box.
In 2010, Oklahoma voters approved State Question 755, known as the “Save Our State Amendment.” The constitutional amendment instructed state courts not to consider international law or Sharia law when deciding cases. PolitiFact
The measure never took effect.
Federal courts blocked the amendment after a Muslim Oklahoma resident challenged it. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a preliminary injunction in 2012, and a federal district court permanently struck down the amendment in 2013 on constitutional grounds. PolitiFact
During his 2022 speech, El-Sayed questioned what Oklahoma voters believed they were prohibiting.
“The state of Oklahoma voted in a referendum to amend the constitution to ban Shariah law,” he said. “What does that mean? I don’t know. And yet the voters banned it anyway.” PolitiFact
What is Sharia?
Sharia is Islamic religious law and ethical guidance derived principally from the Quran and the teachings and traditions associated with Islam. It can encompass religious observance, family life, charitable obligations, financial transactions and personal conduct.
El-Sayed has publicly discussed following Sharia principles in his own life. His campaign has also said he supports the separation of church and state and opposes attempts by any religious group to impose its religious law through American government. Breitbart
That distinction has become important as the 2022 video circulates.
Some Republican politicians and conservative commentators have claimed the speech demonstrates that El-Sayed wants Sharia imposed as American law. The available transcript does not show him calling for Sharia to replace the Constitution or American law. PolitiFact reviewed the full remarks in August and found that social-media claims that he “openly calls for Sharia law in America” misrepresented what he said. PolitiFact
What El-Sayed did do was connect Oklahoma’s anti-Sharia amendment to a historical continuum that included forced Native American removal, the destruction of Black Wall Street and the Oklahoma City bombing.
That comparison is now receiving fresh scrutiny as he seeks federal office.
Religion becomes an issue in Michigan Senate race
El-Sayed, a physician and former Detroit health director, won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary and is facing Republican Mike Rogers in the November election. If elected, El-Sayed would become the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate. AP News
His Muslim faith and previous statements about Sharia have increasingly become subjects of Republican attacks.
Rogers and other Republicans have characterized El-Sayed as an extremist and have made additional allegations about his political associations. The Associated Press reported last week that Rogers alleged El-Sayed was funded by “terrorist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood” but provided no evidence supporting that allegation. AP News
El-Sayed, meanwhile, has sought to focus his general-election campaign on economic issues, including health care, gas prices, campaign finance and Michigan’s automobile industry. AP News
The controversy over the resurfaced speech therefore involves two separate questions that should not be conflated.
The first is whether El-Sayed advocated replacing American law with Sharia. The evidence reviewed does not show that he did.
The second is whether he compared Oklahoma’s attempt to prohibit Sharia considerations in state courts with the historical forces behind the Trail of Tears, Tulsa Race Massacre and Oklahoma City bombing.
On that point, his own words are clear: He did.
Original article
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