U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan Abdul El-Sayed is a silver-tongued devil, practiced at the art of deception. A Q & A at a townhall campaign event exposed El-Sayed for the glib, manipulative, evasive, oily politician he is.
At the townhall meeting in Caro, Michigan, a Republican audience member asked El-Sayed, “Will you disavow the Muslim Brotherhood?”
El-Sayed hurriedly replied, “Sure. Yeah, absolutely.” And then with quicksilvery sophistry El-Sayed slithered away from any potential discussion of his family’s connections to the Muslim Brotherhood by implying audience member Tommy Teepell was a religious bigot, saying, “Why are you asking the question? … what are you implying? Do you assume that I wouldn’t?”
Teepell responded that he didn’t think El-Sayed would disavow the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood because El-Sayed had not yet publicly disavowed the Muslim Brotherhood.
Like a modern incarnation of Nathan Thurm, the tobacco industry spokesperson played by Martin Short in an old SNL skit, El-Sayed retorted: “Have you disavowed them? I haven’t heard you disavow them yet.”
Why would a white Republican with no family members connected to Islamic terrorists need to disavow Islamic terrorists? Yes, El-Sayed thinks voters are just that imbecilic.
El-Sayed continued badgering Teepell, asking him five more times in rapid succession why he asked El-Sayed if he disavowed the Muslim Brotherhood.
Slickster El-Sayed accused Teepell of suggesting El-Sayed has dual loyalties: “implicitly you assume that I’ll have dual loyalties, right? You assume that somehow I wouldn’t disavow, or that I’ll have some higher order allegiance than to the Constitution.”
El-Sayed used these same rhetorical tricks when Fox News reporter Bret Baier asked him about his connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. Continually interrupting Baier, who couldn’t finish a single question, El-Sayed said,
You are asking this question to raise a question about whether or not I have dual loyalties. … don’t be Rogers’ campaign. Be a journalist. … If you’re asking the question about my allegiance to the Constitution, I have never been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. I never will be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. … If the question about my faith is the issue which Mike Rogers wants it to be, I think it is sad and beneath him, and frankly beneath the president of the United States … because under our Constitution, you’re guaranteed the right to pray as you choose to pray.
Baier did not ask him if he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood or if he planned to become one. Neither Baier nor Mike Rogers suggested El-Sayed has no right to pray as he chooses. El-Sayed not only refused to allow Baier to finish asking a single question, but he also clumsily responded to a legitimate concern of Americans with insults directed at Baier, Mike Rogers, and President Trump.
El-Sayed’s evasive rhetorical tactics include monopolizing time and flummoxing questioners with his verbal jousting. He interrupts, objects, misdirects, and attacks, all at top speed.
So, he began rapid-firing questions at Teepell about his faith, asking “are you a man of faith,” “what faith do you practice,” “Do you live by Christian doctrine,” “Do you think I have to live by Christian doctrine?”
Continuing, El-Sayed accused Teepell of seeking to violate the Constitution:
We have a Constitution. And that Constitution guarantees you the right to live by your faith and guarantees me the right to do the same. And the reality of it is this: I’m never going to tell you what faith you can or can’t practice. I want to protect your right to practice your faith as you choose as a Christian man. … it seems like you don’t want to protect my right to practice as I choose to.
Do you see the rhetorical trick he played here with his devilish tongue? Teepell never asked any questions about El-Sayed’s religion. He asked about El-Sayed’s commitment to an Islamic terrorist group, and he asked that question because El-Sayed’s family have long had ties to the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood and perhaps to al Qaeda.
Teepell never said El-Sayed has no right to practice his religion. Teepell never suggested all Americans must practice Christianity. Unlike Muslims in many places around the world who kill family and friends who convert to Christianity, Christians everywhere reject religious coercion.
El-Sayed concluded his inquisition, a four-minute exercise in confusing interlocutor Teepell, as well as El-Sayed’s gullible or dim audience, with the most confusing question, asking Teepell, “Do you disavow any attempt to read any religious doctrine into the laws of our country?”
Teepell replied that he did not disavow attempts to read any religious doctrine into the laws of our country to which El-Sayed, responded condescendingly, “So I think it’s you who needs to understand the Constitution, not me.”
The question El-Sayed asked is woefully—perhaps deliberately—ambiguous. What specifically does he mean by “read[ing] religious doctrine into laws”? Is he asking if Teepell seeks to mandate in law distinctly religious practices like Communion or baptism, which would be unconstitutional? Or is El-Sayed asking if Teepell’s religious views may shape his positions on public policy or laws?
Many Americans on the political left and right are confused about the relationship between church and state, mistakenly believing that it is constitutionally impermissible for religious belief to inform political decisions either on candidate choices or policy positions.
While the Constitution prohibits religious tests for holding office, it does not prohibit voters from considering candidates’ religious beliefs. Every voter in America has the right to vote for or against any candidate for any reason, including candidates’ religious beliefs.
I am free to reject candidates because they are Muslim, or members of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), or the Church of Satan.
Not only that, but I am also free to express publicly my reasons for rejecting such candidates. It is my right to say I will not vote for a Muslim or a member of the ELCA, just as it is the right of a Unitarian to say he will not vote for a Baptist or Catholic.
With regard to policies and laws: All policies and laws reflect or embody someone’s moral beliefs. For religious people, moral beliefs are shaped by their religious beliefs. If I believe a particular religious tradition holds beliefs that if instantiated in public policy are likely to harm individual lives or undermine foundational democratic principles, I would be foolish to elect an adherent of such a religion.
The religion clauses of the First Amendment were intended to protect religion from the intrusive power of the state, not the reverse. The Establishment Clause states that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” That does not mean religious convictions are prohibited from informing political decisions. To expect or demand that political decisions be divorced from personal religious beliefs is an unconscionable breach of the intent of the First Amendment.
Please note what Abdul El-Sayed successfully prevented with his quicksilver tongue: He prevented Tommy Teepell from asking any follow-up questions about El-Sayed’s family’s alleged ties to terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.
While El-Sayed verbally scoots and skitters all around inconvenient questions, it would behoove non-Muslim voters to know just a bit about the Islamic principle of “taqiyya,” which is deception, dissembling, or dissimulation.
Middle East specialist Raymond Ibrahim quotes Islamic scholar Sami Makarem, former associate professor of Islamic studies at the American University of Beirut on the ubiquity of taqiyya among Muslims:
Taqiyya is of fundamental importance in Islam. Practically every Islamic sect agrees to it and practices it. … We can go so far as to say that the practice of taqiyya is mainstream in Islam, and that those few sects not practicing it diverge from the mainstream.
Further, Ibrahim makes explicit why voters are justified in their concerns about El-Sayed’s (likely) competing loyalties:
Qur’anic verse 3:28 is often seen as the primary verse that sanctions deception towards non-Muslims: “Let believers [Muslims] not take infidels [non-Muslims] for friends and allies instead of believers. Whoever does this shall have no relationship left with God—unless you but guard yourselves against them, taking precautions.”
To paraphrase El-Sayed, deceitful people deceive people.