The Core Question For America’s First Muslim Senator

Michigan just sent to the Senate a man who will not tell us whether Islamic Sharia or the Constitution comes first. That is the story, and it is not the one liberals in the press are telling. They are fancifully celebrating a “historic first,” although they should be asking what, exactly, we were handed.

Abdul El-Sayed wants Medicare for All, an end to unconditional aid to Israel, and the backing of Bernie Sanders. Fine — vote against him on those grounds. However, the harder fact is what he and his crowd chose to celebrate on election night. He did not run as a doctor or a policy man in that moment, but was delighted to be introduced to the nation as America’s first Muslim senator, and the room roared when he said “inshallah,” declaring “Alhamdulillah.”

A religious identity was the headline of his victory; the policy was a marginal footnote.

In the West, a Presbyterian elected to office is a senator who happens to be Presbyterian. A Muslim elected to office is seen by Muslims as an Islamic victory. The infamous CAIR counts these wins after every election, celebrates them, and announces them to the world. This “Muslim” pride tells you something: in Islam, the ummah isn’t merely a community of mere worshippers who seek inner piety, but a political body with a legal order attached, and its political victories are viewed as communal victories for Allah’s sake and for Islam’s hegemony. Muslims in the West openly organize their votes around a shared political identity — they vote as a block. Candidates are judged by how effectively they advance the “Muslim cause,” and this collective political solidarity is interpreted as religious piety — no Muslims hide that, and it’s a part of how they present and advance Islam’s presence in Muslim lands. Muslims don’t hide or downplay that, but openly celebrate and proclaim it to gain power and influence.

Many American commentators prefer to avoid this hard reality: Islam wasn’t born as a private spiritual religion that later wandered into politics. From its inception, it has been a political-advancing ideology. For Muslims, Muhammad was simultaneously prophet, lawgiver, judge, and commander of armies in the same lifetime. He led them in prayer, and led them in wars against pagans, Jews, and Christians. His community, the ummah, was a state with a legal code and a political conquering dimension. For 14 centuries, the Muslim jurists who shaped Islamic law advanced that structure, insisting the world is divided between dar al-Islam (the abode of Islam) and everything else. Muslims hardly see a separation between state and religion.

A Muslim in politics isn’t betraying his religion by mixing the two — this mixture is the religion.

That is why one question matters more than any plank on his platform, and it is the question Kennedy answered in Houston in 1960. In front of skeptical Protestant ministers he said his church would not dictate his public acts. Catholics earned that scrutiny and met it. Where is El-Sayed’s Houston, America? Does he affirm or reject Sharia’s rulings on apostasy from Islam and blasphemy against Muhammad? On women’s testimony and inheritance, does he follow the Quran or ignore it? May any Islamic ruling ever override a U.S. constitutional right, Mr. Abdul? He has had a long campaign to answer. He answered about Gaza instead.

In his Muslim ideology, Israel serves as a dependable catalyst. Opposition to the Jewish state and to American backing for it brings together otherwise diverse Muslim groups while aligning with certain ideological currents on the American Left. This opposition did not originate with modern progressive politics; it has roots in longstanding social and religious Muslim hierarchies that despised Jews and Christians as communities meant to occupy a subordinate position under Muslim governance. An independent Jewish state challenges that established order. El-Sayed’s history on this matter is therefore revealing. Granted, a senator is entitled to his view on Israel. The country is entitled to know whether his ummah ranks above American interests when the two collide.

Then there is the shield. Watch what happens to anyone who presses these questions. Scrutiny of Islam is instantly labeled bigotry, and the conversation ends. El-Sayed has already used the move, accusing Republicans of weaponizing his Arabic name and challenging his opponent to pronounce it.

The deeper failure is ours. We have spent 20 years refusing to teach Americans what Islam’s founding sources actually say about law and power. Because our schools, newsrooms, and churches stayed silent, voters in Michigan were told that a “first” Muslim was a triumph and were given no framework for asking what it means and why it should be celebrated.

That is a failure of nerve. This indifference of many non-Muslims who stayed home or voted for this kind of candidate is a very troubling pattern in the West, as Islamic poisonous ideologies can only grow in a soil of religious and social ignorance. If we were serious, we would have demanded the Kennedy test from day one, in the same tone we use for everyone else.

Until we do, every such “historic first” will remain an unanswered question mark hanging over the Constitution itself. Demand the answer — or stop pretending the silence is tolerance.

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A. S. Ibrahim holds two PhDs in Islamic Studies. He is the author of “Sharia Versus the U.S. Constitution: Why Americans Must Choose Freedom” and “Islam and the West.” He has also authored “Muhammad’s Military Expeditions” (Oxford, 2024), “A Concise Guide to the Life of Muhammad” (Baker Academic, 2022), “Conversion to Islam” (Oxford, 2021), “Basics of Arabic” (Zondervan, 2021), “A Concise Guide to the Quran” (Baker Academic, 2020), and “The Stated Motivations for the Early Islamic Expansion” (Peter Lang, 2018), among others. Follow him on X: @al2ostaz