Following his primary victory, Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed—who is Muslim and a former public health official—has become the target of faith-based attacks by Republican lawmakers and online influencers.
Various X accounts have circulated false claims on social media alleging that El-Sayed advocates for establishing Islamic Shariah law as the law of the United States.
“He openly calls for Sharia law in America,” conservative commentator Avery Daye stated in an August 8 post on the platform.
The post features edited clips from a 2022 address that El-Sayed delivered during an awards gala hosted by the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Similar allegations have been echoed by prominent political figures, including Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Mace also recently leveled similar accusations regarding Shariah against New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani following his November election victory—a claim that was rated Pants on Fire.
In the general election, El-Sayed is set to compete against Republican former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers.
The social media posts rely on selectively edited snippets of El-Sayed’s 2022 remarks, removing them from their intended framework. During the speech, he referenced a defunct state-level ban on Shariah while discussing Oklahoma’s historical instances of discrimination, ultimately delivering a message centered on unity. At no point did he suggest replacing American jurisprudence with Islamic law.
Shariah (frequently spelled sharia) encompasses a broad framework of guidelines guiding Islamic observance, personal routines, and financial conduct.
Back in 2010, voters in Oklahoma passed the “Save Our State” constitutional amendment aimed at preventing courts from considering Shariah or international law in legal rulings. However, a federal court invalidated the measure in 2013, declaring it unconstitutional.
Legal experts noted in 2014 interviews that the application of foreign law within domestic courts is a standard and uncontroversial practice, often utilized when parties engaged in cross-border commercial contracts agree to be bound by the legal standards of a specific foreign jurisdiction.
A Closer Look at the Oklahoma Remarks
Throughout his 16-minute address, El-Sayed highlighted several dark episodes in Oklahoma’s past, such as the 1830 Indian Removal Act and the resulting Trail of Tears that claimed thousands of Native American lives; the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, which devastated the thriving Black community of Greenwood; and the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City by an anti-government white supremacist.
The specific quote extracted and circulated online by critics was: “The state of Oklahoma voted in a referendum to amend the constitution to ban Shariah law. What does that mean? I don’t know. And yet the voters banned it anyway.”
Daye’s post omitted the surrounding context of those remarks. The complete passage provides a broader perspective:
“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.”
“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. 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. We have to set it in the context of our history. But here’s the thing: The beautiful thing about our opportunity today is that we have a choice in front of us about what we do next.”
Drawing on verses from the Quran, he urged American Muslims to champion civil rights and act as advocates for fairness, whether serving as medical professionals assisting underserved populations or as entrepreneurs creating employment opportunities.
El-Sayed also invoked the opening phrases of the U.S. Constitution: “We the people. And what’s the rest? In order to form a more perfect union.”
He continued, “Every time somebody tries to divide us, tells us that this group or that group does not belong because of the color of their skin, because of how they pray, because of where they come from, because of what language they spoke first — that’s antithetical to what it means to be American. But the work of perfecting is in deciding that we are going to show up with and for each other.”
In a subsequent 2025 discussion with Religion News Service, El-Sayed elaborated on the personal influence of his Islamic faith: “I believe deeply in the role that faith has played in my life, in, you know, how it orients me to try and be a better person, to give more of myself, to know my fellow creation, to treat people — all people — with dignity and humanity and respect.”
Furthermore, he affirmed his commitment to the constitutional division between church and state, expressing a desire “to protect the kind of America where everybody can pray how they choose to pray, or choose not to pray at all.”
Evaluation
Claims circulating on social media assert that El-Sayed has openly campaigned for the implementation of Shariah law in the U.S.
While these assertions are accompanied by footage from a 2022 speech, the speaker made no such statements.
Rather than calling for religious law to supersede American statutes, El-Sayed focused his message on solidarity, urging individuals to pursue equity despite historical prejudice and even explicitly citing the U.S. Constitution.
Because the allegation is entirely unfounded and misrepresents the facts, it earns a rating of Pants on Fire!
RELATED: False claim that New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani plans to introduce Sharia law to the U.S.