President Donald Trump’s accusations that Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is a “jihadist” seeking to impose Sharia law have drawn condemnation from El-Sayed and renewed scrutiny of claims about Islam’s religious legal tradition in the United States. Trump made the remarks Oct. 25 at a campaign rally in Port Huron, where he also said El-Sayed should face a metal detector before entering the Senate. The Associated Press reported that Trump offered no evidence for his allegations.
“I’m here to keep a jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States senator,” Trump told supporters, according to CBS News’ account of the rally. Trump also claimed El-Sayed wanted the country to adopt Sharia law. The White House did not provide evidence supporting the Muslim Brotherhood allegation when asked by PolitiFact, which rated the claim “Pants on Fire.” PolitiFact reported that El-Sayed has repeatedly denied ties to the organization.
El-Sayed responded later that day at a campaign event in Grand Rapids, saying he was not concerned about Trump’s repeated mispronunciation and misrepresentation of his name. “I don’t even care that he remembers my whole name because he can just go on and call me ‘senator’ after November,” El-Sayed said, according to AP. At a Detroit news conference the following day, he called the attacks “deflections and deceptions based on no evidence.”
The controversy centers in part on a basic distinction in Islamic law: Sharia is generally understood by Muslims as divine guidance for religious and ethical life, while fiqh refers to human efforts to interpret and apply that guidance. It is not a single statute book administered by a central Islamic authority. Muslim religious practices—including prayer, fasting, dietary observance and charitable giving—do not create an independent legal system in the United States. The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding’s overview says courts may recognize religious agreements only through the same neutral legal principles applied to agreements from other faith communities.
One frequently cited example is the Islamic marriage contract known as a mahr. In Nouri v. Dadgar, a Maryland appeals court held that a mahr could be enforced only if its secular terms satisfied ordinary contract principles and the court did not need to decide a theological question. The ruling did not give Islamic law independent authority; it treated the agreement as a contract subject to the same legal standards governing other private agreements.
The Michigan Senate contest will be decided in the Nov. 3 midterm election, with former Rep. Mike Rogers representing Republicans and El-Sayed seeking to become the nation’s first Muslim senator. Trump’s Port Huron speech placed El-Sayed’s faith at the center of the closing campaign, while El-Sayed has urged voters to treat the race as a referendum on the president’s record and rhetoric. The Detroit News reported that El-Sayed described “Donald Trump’s war,” tariffs and personality as being on the ballot.