The imam at Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed's mosque quietly wiped dozens of sermon recordings from YouTube, including one eulogizing a Hamas leader as a "symbol of jihad", after investigative reports exposed the content.
The Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor's YouTube channel, which as recently as last Tuesday featured dozens of recorded sermons by Imam Abdelhamid Algizawi, now displays a blank page reading "This channel doesn't have any content." By Wednesday evening, specific videos, including Algizawi's August 2, 2024, eulogy for slain Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and a separate sermon urging congregants to vote for El-Sayed, had been set to private. The Washington Free Beacon reported that the scrubbing followed its series of investigative reports on Algizawi and the mosque.
Neither Algizawi, the MCA of Ann Arbor, nor El-Sayed responded to requests for comment. The content vanished without explanation, but the timing speaks for itself.
Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, died on or about August 1, 2024, after an explosive device was smuggled into his guesthouse in Tehran. Two days later, Algizawi stood before his Ann Arbor congregation and delivered a eulogy that left no ambiguity about where his sympathies lay.
In the sermon, Algizawi declared of Haniyeh:
"He is a symbol of jihad, a symbol of struggle, a symbol of patriotism, and a symbol of devotion. No one loves him except someone who loves God and his Messenger, and no one hates him except an enemy of Islam. He is a righteous man, one of the righteous.... He wanted to liberate Palestine, his land and his homeland. He sought nothing more than that. Yet despite this, the unjust and wicked killed him.... We ask Almighty God to grant him a place in Paradise. O God, place him among the martyrs and the righteous."
That sermon, praising the leader of an organization the United States designates as a terrorist group, sat on the MCA's public YouTube channel for more than two years before it disappeared. As previously reported, Algizawi described Haniyeh as a "heroic martyr," language that goes well beyond political disagreement and into open glorification of a designated terrorist leader.
The video is gone from the MCA channel, but it remains viewable through the Free Beacon's archive and a capture by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
The Haniyeh eulogy was not the only sermon that vanished. In a separate recording made after El-Sayed's primary victory, Algizawi described the win as "a very big victory for Muslims" and "for the Islamic nation," then told congregants it was their "obligation" to vote for El-Sayed in the general election. That video, too, was set to private on the MCA channel, though MEMRI captured it before it disappeared.
A source familiar with the situation told the Free Beacon that El-Sayed typically prays at the MCA of Ann Arbor. That connection raises a straightforward question: does a candidate for the United States Senate endorse, reject, or simply ignore the public statements of the imam at his own mosque? El-Sayed has not answered.
The candidate's silence is part of a pattern. Algizawi's sermons also included denunciations of homosexuality and complaints about Jewish scholars, positions that sit in direct tension with El-Sayed's own public messaging.
During Pride Month 2025, El-Sayed posted on X:
"This month and every month, I stand with the LGBTQ+ community in their struggle for equal rights and dignity. I'll always fight for an America where all of us can live and thrive as we are."
That statement landed while his imam's 2022 sermon, delivered at a Sacramento-area Islamic center, remained publicly available online. In that sermon, Algizawi stated plainly:
"Also, Muslims cannot compromise their religion. We cannot say, 'Hey, because I am a Muslim, I'm American, we are living in America, we have...' No, we cannot compromise our religion."
As of Wednesday evening, that 2022 video had not been removed. It was hosted on a different channel, the Sacramento-area Islamic center's, not on the MCA of Ann Arbor's scrubbed page. The selective cleanup targeted only the Ann Arbor mosque's content, the material most directly tied to El-Sayed's Senate campaign.
The contradiction is stark. El-Sayed courts LGBTQ+ voters with public pledges of solidarity while regularly worshipping at a mosque led by an imam who has preached that Muslims "cannot compromise their religion" on the subject. One audience gets the progressive pitch. The other gets the imam's uncompromising message. Voters in both camps deserve to know which one reflects the candidate's actual convictions.
El-Sayed's handling of the imam controversy fits alongside other statements that raise questions about his judgment on matters of political violence. At a July 2025 campaign event, El-Sayed offered this reflection on terrorism:
"There is a level of pain and frustration and a level of lack of agency that they have to feel to do something so insane and absurd, right? And so I've often tried to ask, like, so what moves somebody into that, and how is it that we're behaving that may get somebody to think that we don't see them, and that's creating pain?"
He continued by suggesting American foreign policy bears responsibility for creating the conditions that produce terrorism, arguing that the United States "set up this rules-based international order, and then we break the rules of the rules-based international order." His framing placed the burden of explanation not on the terrorists but on the country they target.
After a Lebanese-American man whose brother was a Hezbollah commander attacked Temple Israel, a Michigan synagogue, El-Sayed responded by saying, "It's just critical for us to understand that hurt people do hurt people." When that remark drew criticism, he told the Detroit News it was aimed at providing "context for why it happened." Republican Senate rival Mike Rogers branded El-Sayed "anti-American" over separate resurfaced remarks about September 11.
Providing "context" for a synagogue attack carried out by a man with Hezbollah family ties is a choice. So is worshipping at a mosque where the imam eulogizes Hamas leaders. So is staying silent when the sermon tapes get scrubbed.
The MCA of Ann Arbor's decision to wipe its YouTube channel clean accomplished one thing: it confirmed that someone connected to the mosque recognized the sermons as a liability. The content did not disappear because it aged out of relevance. It disappeared after journalists started writing about it.
The Free Beacon's reporting, along with MEMRI's archival work, preserved the material before it could vanish entirely. The Haniyeh eulogy, the call to vote for El-Sayed as a religious obligation, and the denunciation of homosexuality all remain accessible through those archives. Deleting the YouTube uploads did not undo the words. It just made clear that someone wanted them hidden.
El-Sayed's broader financial and organizational ties have also drawn scrutiny. His father-in-law bankrolled his super PAC while leading organizations linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. Separately, El-Sayed headlined luxury yacht fundraisers for an Islamic charity flagged by Congress over Brotherhood ties. None of this is guilt by association. All of it is a pattern that a Senate candidate owes voters an honest accounting for.
Michigan voters are being asked to send Abdul El-Sayed to the United States Senate. He will not answer questions about his imam's sermons. He will not explain why the tapes were scrubbed. He tells progressive audiences one thing and sits in a pew where the message is the opposite. A candidate who cannot give a straight answer about what he believes, or what he tolerates, has no business asking for a promotion.
