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Vice President JD Vance put Abdul El-Sayed at the center of his attack on the modern Democratic Party, pointing to the Michigan Senate nominee’s past remarks linking criticism of Sharia law to White supremacy as evidence that the party has abandoned its working-class roots.
Vance delivered the remarks Friday at the Cleveland-Cliffs Middletown Works steel plant in his Ohio hometown as neighboring Michigan gears up for one of the midterms’ most competitive Senate races.
El-Sayed is facing Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in a contest that could help determine control of the Senate.
Vance spoke about his late grandfather, who worked as a welder for 40 years and voted Democrat because he believed it was “the party of union men.”
But Vance argued the Democratic Party has strayed from its working-class identity.
“This is the party, the Democrat party of graduate students, rather than the union and nonunion workers who make this facility run,” Vance said.
“It’s sometimes actually hard to understand what these modern Democrats actually stand for. But look what they say. Pay close attention, and they’ll leave these little hints of what they actually care about.”
Vance then turned his attention to El-Sayed, the son of Muslim Egyptian immigrants.
“He once argued, not too long ago, that criticisms of Sharia law were rooted in White supremacy,” Vance said.
“I’d love to go back in time and tell my papa that there is a man who claims to stand for working people who says not only should we have Sharia law, but if you criticize it you’re a White supremacist. That’s not my grandpa’s Democratic Party, my friend.”
Vance was referring to a speech El-Sayed gave at the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) 2022 annual banquet in Oklahoma, where he was the keynote speaker.
El-Sayed criticized a 2010 ballot measure known as State Question 755, which sought to amend the state constitution to ban courts from considering Sharia law in their decisions. The measure was approved by 70% of voters but was ultimately blocked by federal courts.
“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,” El-Sayed said.
“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,” El-Sayed continued.
“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.”
El-Sayed’s remarks at the CAIR banquet are among several statements that have drawn criticism from conservatives and Republicans who accuse the Senate candidate of viewing politics through the lens of race and religion.
Other remarks generating criticism include El-Sayed accusing Israel of committing “genocide” and describing the Jewish state as an “apartheid,” while prompting concerns from members of the Jewish community.
However, after his primary victory, El-Sayed said, “My commitment to Jewish safety is the same as my commitment to the safety of my own kids. We have a responsibility to take on antisemitism in all of its forms, wherever we see it.”
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