lenny unencumbered

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence clamorous, to be led to safety by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

–H.L. Mencken, journalist, satirist, cultural critic

What a relief! No Mohamed in the House!

Unfortunately (for mindless fearmongers, at least), there is now one in the U.S. Senate. That’s probably worse, right?

What is it about Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed that terrified so many Americans that they had to resort to vilifying his name? He’s just a man, but he bears a name that induces fear and hate in equal measure.

His crime?

Running for high office. Not just any office, but one of the highest in the U.S. federal government. However, neither troubles Americans, unless you’re Muslim. It’s the kind of bigotry that has become commonplace in the most powerful country in the world.

Powerful, yes, but apparently not very democratic. The U.S. ranks 36th globally for quality of its democracy. That’s the exact point where Working Democracy stops, and Deficient Democracy begins. It’s even one position below Israel, which perplexingly still rates as a working democracy (evidently, it’s still acceptable for an apartheid state to be called a democracy, even a working one).

The Egyptian-born El-Sayed is more popularly known as Abdul El-Sayed, and I can understand why. Mohamed, the most common variant of the Arabic surname, is widely reviled in the West, not just in America.

President Donald Trump has frequently branded him as a jihadist. He’s been accused of being a terrorist and a follower of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian Sunni Islamist movement. Republican Senator John Kennedy ​claimed that El-Sayed sleeps “in a bin Laden jersey,” while Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, called El-Sayed a “jihadist leprechaun.”

Perhaps the most pitiful and bigoted accusation against him, and perhaps one that is most frequently targeted at Muslim immigrants in general, is the absurd fabrication that he (they) are going to introduce Sharia law into the country. None of these bigots, however, will ever lay out how they think sharia law will be implemented. It’s just a dogmatic smear they like to repeat when rational discourse fails them.

As of November 5th, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reports “97 confirmed American Muslim electoral victories at the federal, state, and local levels across 21 states, including 38 state legislative wins.” These were the winning Muslim candidates in the 2026 midterm elections:

1. Abdul El-Sayed, U.S. Senate (MI): first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate
2. Adam Hamawy, U.S. House, 12th District (NJ): first Muslim to represent New Jersey in Congress
3. Darializa Avila Chevalier, U.S. House, 13th District (NY)
4. Ilhan Omar, U.S. House, 5th District (MN) (reelection)
5. Rashida Tlaib, U.S. House, 12th District (MI) (reelection)
6. André Carson, U.S. House, 7th District (IN) (reelection)
7. Lateefah Simon, U.S. House, 12th District (CA) (reelection)

Perhaps the fearmongers spreading the Sharia law lie need to explain how one Muslim member of a 100-seat Senate and 6 Muslim members of a 435-seat House are going to convince their Congressional colleagues to change the U.S. Constitution to implement Sharia law. American democracy, as verified earlier, is no longer as rigorous, but surely not as weak as they imply.

Being neither Muslim nor religious, for that matter, I am fairly certain that the accusations are highly implausible and just common Islamophobic bigotry. It’s disconcerting that so many people, even here in South Africa, hold such zealous beliefs. Why not let a Muslim man tell you personally how moronic it all is?