Documentary footage shows Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed managing a $1 dowry in his sister’s 2016 Sharia wedding years after Muslim Brotherhood family claims.
A 2023 documentary captures Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed walking his half-sister through a symbolic one-dollar dowry before her November 2016 Islamic marriage ceremony.
The Washington Free Beacon obtained the film Coming Around and reported that El-Sayed’s voice and hand appear as he guides the process. An Islamic marriage certificate shown in the footage states the ceremony was conducted according to Islamic law, or Sharia. A thorough public records search found no U.S. state marriage certificate for the bride or groom.
El-Sayed was serving as Detroit’s health director at the time. His half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, is now an assistant professor at the University of Chicago who researches religion, gender, identity, and demography. The documentary follows her as she weighs coming out to her devout Muslim mother.
The film’s plot summary says she married her boyfriend, identified only as Q, to postpone that disclosure and to project strictly heterosexual relationship interests. She wanted a symbolic $1 dowry because, as she told her mother, she did not believe in the dowry practice.
In the footage, El-Sayed can be heard laying out the next step.
"Between now and the marriage, he has to give her a dollar."
He then checks for agreement.
"Okay, are we all good with that?"
The Islamic marriage certificate in the documentary is explicit.
"This marriage ceremony of the following couple has been conducted according to the Islamic Law (Shariah)."
His role matches that of a wali, the male legal guardian who oversees the marriage under Islamic rules. The ceremony appears to have taken place in the Midwest. Exact venue details are not established in the reporting.
Q later posted on social media after the vows, calling Abdelhadi “That’s my bae,” and shared posts that showed awareness of her sexuality and encouraged her queerness. The pair later split after moving in together. In 2015, Q had posted a selfie of El-Sayed and Abdelhadi in front of the New York City skyline.
The wedding footage lands years after Abdelhadi wrote that her family “has long been” in the Muslim Brotherhood and that many relatives had been jailed over membership. Those sister’s old posts remain part of the public record around the Michigan Senate race.
El-Sayed denied family ties or affiliations to the Brotherhood on Meet the Press this past Sunday. The Free Beacon report places that denial against the earlier family statements and the 2016 ceremony.
Their mother, Fatten Elkomy, was active in the Brotherhood during college in Egypt in the 1970s, according to the prior reporting referenced in the story. She later worked at the Islamic American Relief Agency. The Treasury Department designated that group a terrorist organization in 2004 for providing money and material support to al Qaeda.
The Muslim Brotherhood spawned Hamas in Gaza in the 1980s and has been described as providing intellectual backbone for ISIS and al Qaeda. The Trump administration sanctioned the Egyptian Brotherhood as a terrorist group for planning attacks on U.S. interests with Hamas after the Oct. 7 attack.
Campaign finance questions have followed El-Sayed as well, including reporting that the Michigan Senate candidate took thousands from donors tied to the Brotherhood.
In 2009, El-Sayed told the New York Times he had an obligation to follow Sharia until the day he dies and to live in a Shariah-compliant way. That same period covered a Shariah-compliant mortgage on a condo in Ann Arbor.
In 2022 he spoke against a proposed Oklahoma ban on Sharia law and compared the measure to the Trail of Tears. A private bookshelf of his contained A Thematic Commentary on the Qur’an by Sheikh Mohammed al-Ghazali, identified as a Muslim Brotherhood member. The book includes the line that “the refusal of implemenation of sharia is apostasy.”
Campaign spokeswoman Roxie Richner said in August that El-Sayed believes in the separation of church and state.
"While he personally lives by the rules of his faith, as many Americans of various faiths do, Abdul opposes any effort by any religious community to write their faith laws into the laws of our country."
Voters can weigh that assurance against the documentary audio of the candidate managing a Sharia dowry process while serving as a public health official. Separate reporting has also covered how he headlined luxury yacht fundraisers for an Islamic charity flagged by Congress over Brotherhood ties.
Abdelhadi has remained close to El-Sayed. In 2020 he transferred money to her to help pay for a birthday present for their mother. Republican opponent Mike Rogers has released ads highlighting her social media posts, and the Free Beacon describes her as a growing liability in the Senate race.
On the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack, she posted a video titled “A blessing for October 7.” In an October 2024 podcast she said, “I do believe that Palestinians have a right to violent resistance.” Last year she was arrested after assaulting a police officer during an anti-ICE rally in Chicago.
El-Sayed’s own record on policing has drawn scrutiny in the same race, including past comments that cast police as a military force and pushed to pull their power. Additional campaign controversy has included a former Michigan Democratic chair hitting the campaign over website edits that backed a synagogue attack.
Coming Around was an obscure 2023 documentary. The Free Beacon obtained a copy and matched El-Sayed by voice and by a ring visible on his hand in the wedding scenes. No independent U.S. civil marriage filing has surfaced to match the Islamic certificate.
Michigan voters now have the ceremony audio, the certificate language, the family Brotherhood statements, the Sunday denial, and the campaign’s church-and-state pledge in the same file. The gap between personal Sharia practice and public assurances is no longer abstract.
Senate candidates who manage religious-law ceremonies while denying the networks around them should expect the footage, the filings, and the family record to travel with them to Election Day.
