REPUBLICANS KEEP SAYING their campaign against Abdul El-Sayed isn’t trying to exploit fear and hatred of Muslims.
asserted
campaign → keep → Muslims
Then they keep doing things to prove that it is.
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it → keep → things
They’ve been at it for months—literally since the first hours after El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination in early August, when the GOP launched ads referring to him by his full first name, “Abdulrahman.”
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GOP → win → name
But they may have hit a new low last week, with an attack ad that’s all over the internet and television.
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that → hit → internet
Its central claim is that El-Sayed wants to impose sharia law, the religious code of Islam, on the rest of America.
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Sayed → want → America
The ad and the effort behind it are worth examining in detail, regardless of whether you care about Michigan’s Senate race—or, for that matter, how you feel about El-Sayed potentially becoming Michigan’s next senator.
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Sayed → examine → matter
That’s because the campaign against him is an example of a destructive, dangerous trend visible all over America: Republicans and their allies not even pretending to observe traditional standards of accuracy, civility, and basic decency in politics, especially when it comes to Muslims.
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it → ’ → Muslims
Those standards have never been particularly high, to be clear, and Republicans aren’t alone in twisting facts to suit their political agendas.
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Republicans → twist → agendas
But the freedom that they feel to describe Islam and its adherents as menaces—along with their willingness to exploit the truth-bending capabilities of social media—makes for an especially toxic mix.
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they → feel → mix
You can see it in Georgia, where a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor put out an AI-generated ad of Muslims invading a suburban neighborhood.
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Muslims → see → neighborhood
You can see it in Alabama, where a GOP candidate for attorney general proclaimed in a campaign spot that anybody who supports “radical Islam” can “Allahu Akbar your butt all the way back to the Middle East.”
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who → see → East
You can see it in Texas, where the state GOP platform literally calls for passing “Don’t Sharia My Texas” legislation.
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platform → see → legislation
The rhetoric and strategy are all over the U.S. Capitol, too, where some Republicans have formed a “Sharia-Free America Caucus.”
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Republicans → form → Caucus
And that’s not to mention what you’ll hear from Donald Trump himself, who has repeatedly—including this past Friday—called El-Sayed “a violent, vicious jihadist.”
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who → ’ → Sayed
Trump and the others may actually believe El-Sayed is some kind of threat.
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Sayed → believe → threat
Who knows.
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Who → know → ?
But this much is clear: Their willingness to bash Muslims and Islam shows they believe the strategy works, and they are sure to keep at it if the midterms go their way.
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midterms → bash → way
SO LET’S TALK ABOUT that Michigan ad, which you can watch here:
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you → let → which
The narrator begins by quoting something El-Sayed once told the New York Times: “When I die and I stand before God and go through everything I did in my life, I don’t want to say I did it the easy way instead of the Sharia-compliant way.”
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I → begin → it
Dark, intense music, the kind you’d expect from an overdramatized thriller or horror film, plays in the background while the narrator asks: “The Sharia law way: What’s that?”
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that → expect → way
Then comes the answer, words appearing in red and white against the backdrop of a woman in a black niqab: “Using government to dictate how women dress, requiring they have a guardian, or prohibiting women from filing for divorce.
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they → come → divorce
“The Sharia-law compliant way,” the narrator concludes.
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narrator → conclude → ?
It’s difficult to capture the full dishonesty of the ad.
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It → ’ → ad
But a good starting point is what El-Sayed was actually saying in that quote, and what he was not.
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he → say → quote
It comes from an interview El-Sayed gave seventeen years ago, to a reporter writing about a Michigan bank that offers customers a special kind of home loan for Islamic customers.
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that → come → customers
It tells the story of an Ann Arbor banker who learned from a customer that Islamic law forbids the charging or payment of interest.
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law → tell → interest
The banker, who is Catholic, adopted some alternative financial packages (like loans that build interest into the selling price) that made mortgages technically compliant with Muslim law.
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mortgages → adopt → law
El-Sayed appears briefly in the article—quoted once, near the end—because he had recently taken out one of those loans.
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he → appear → loans
When El-Sayed, then a 24-year-old medical student, said he wanted to conduct himself in “the sharia-compliant way,” he meant using the religious code as a guideline for his personal life.
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he → say → life
It’s similar to the way a Catholic might describe following the Church’s dogma and doctrine, as several scholars explained to me, or to the way a Jew might describe observing “Halakhah,” which covers everything from prayer to diet.1
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which → ’ → prayer
Here’s how Andrew March, professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts and a widely cited expert on Islam, put it to me in an email:
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March → ’ → email
Obviously, and this cannot be stressed enough, whenever an individual Muslim, particularly one living in a non-Muslim country, speaks about living a “shari’a-compliant life” he or she is speaking about their own personal morality and behavior.
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he → stress → morality
This could be not drinking alcohol or eating pork, not having sex outside of marriage, not taking out loans that scholars may regard as usurious, performing the pilgrimage when it is possible, being loyal to one’s parents, and other matters that pertain to an individual’s own behavior.
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that → drink → behavior
Halakhah is an especially useful analogy here, because it too has a prohibition tied to financial transactions, though it applies only to loans between Jews.
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it → have → Jews
And as with sharia, there are financial workarounds—like structuring loans as business agreements—for those who observe.
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who → be → those
One other parallel to Jewish law is that there is no single, universally agreed-upon version.
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parallel → be → law
Jewish law is the product of an ongoing debate among rabbis, literally going back thousands of years, with interpretations today varying depending on which authority you trust.
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you → go → authority
And it’s the same way with Islam, as David Cook, a professor of religion and expert on Islam, told me in a phone interview.
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Cook → ’ → interview
“The people that are making the most blatant comments about sharia appear to present it as if it’s something unified, something like the U.S. Constitution that you could apply ‘sharia’—which, from a classical point of view, is really quite laughable,” Cook said.
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Cook → make → view
Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law School professor who has written on Islamic law and public life, agrees.
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who → write → law
…and 46 more, not listed.
The Aporia
