The Islamic Society of North America pulled a Pakistani cleric who admitted forcing his 13-year-old niece into marriage from its Labor Day weekend convention, but left a roster of speakers with records of Holocaust denial, antisemitic sermons, and calls for armed attacks on Israel, all sharing a stage with Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
ISNA announced Monday that Tariq Masood "is no longer speaking at the convention," spokeswoman Crystal Habib told the Washington Free Beacon. The removal came after the Free Beacon reported on Masood's public defense of child marriage and his own admission that he forced a 13-year-old family member into a marriage. Habib added only: "We have no further comment on this matter."
Masood had been slated to speak on a panel about youth mental health. Canadian activists had urged their government to block his visa as recently as 2024, citing what they called his "pedophilic rhetoric." ISNA acted only after the Free Beacon's reporting made the booking public, not before.
But the convention's problems run far deeper than one removed speaker. The lineup that ISNA chose to keep tells a story the organization's terse statement did not address.
Texas-based imam Yasir Qadhi remains scheduled to appear on several panels at the convention. Qadhi has called the Holocaust a "hoax" and said Adolf Hitler "never intended to mass-destroy the Jews," as the National Post reported. ISNA has offered no public explanation for why Masood's record warranted removal while Qadhi's did not.
Qadhi will share a panel with Abdul Nasir Jangda, another Texas-based cleric who has defended the practice of sex slavery and said that husbands have a right under Islamic law to rape their wives, as documented in reports from The Hill and a Peace and Tolerance research document.
Neither cleric was removed. Neither was publicly addressed by ISNA's leadership.
Two Dearborn-area religious leaders will speak on a panel about closing the divide between Shia and Sunni Muslims. One is Baqir Berry, head of Dearborn's Islamic Institute of Knowledge. In a June sermon documented by the Middle East Media Research Institute, Berry prayed to grant "mighty victory" to the "mujahideen" over the "evil of these Zionists."
The other is Hassan Qazwini, head of the Islamic Institute of America in Dearborn Heights. Qazwini recently prayed in a sermon to "grant victory to our brothers in Iran" and "inflict defeat upon Your Zionist enemies." He also accused Israel of backing ISIS, a claim so inflammatory that Bernie Sanders's 2020 presidential campaign publicly condemned Qazwini's "antisemitic conspiracy theories."
El-Sayed has his own history with Qazwini. At the grand opening of the Islamic Institute of America in June, the Michigan Senate candidate offered Qazwini a "hearty congratulations", a public endorsement of a figure whose antisemitism was already well documented.
Hussam Ayloush, an official with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, will speak on a panel about civic participation. After the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, Ayloush said publicly that "Israel should be attacked" and that "you want to pick up arms and defend your people and your land, that is a legitimate right."
ISNA's convention will also feature New York-based imam Siraj Wahhaj, who was an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The keynote address will come from Arif Alvi, a former Pakistani president who stoked outrage in 2018 when he declined to amend Pakistan's anti-blasphemy laws after two Christian brothers were sentenced to death for allegedly insulting the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
This is the convention where Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate for the United States Senate, has chosen to speak. El-Sayed's pattern of appearing alongside figures with records of extremism and antisemitism has drawn repeated scrutiny during his campaign against Republican Mike Rogers.
El-Sayed's campaign posted a statement on X saying that "Abdul is not affiliated with and does not endorse any other participant of the conference" and that the candidate is scheduled "to speak on unity and commitment to justice in public service." The campaign did not respond to the Free Beacon's request for further comment.
That blanket disclaimer is doing a lot of work. It asks voters to believe that El-Sayed can share a convention stage with a Holocaust denier, clerics who have defended sex slavery and marital rape, imams who prayed for armed victory over "Zionists," a CAIR official who said Israel should be attacked, and an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and bear no responsibility for the company he keeps.
El-Sayed's father-in-law, Tayeb Jukaku, sits on ISNA's founding committee. The federal government identified ISNA as a public-facing group for the Muslim Brotherhood and linked the organization to the financing of Hamas, as prior reporting on Jukaku's role has detailed. Jukaku has also been identified as a top donor to an El-Sayed super PAC.
So El-Sayed is not just a guest at ISNA's convention. He has deep family ties to the organization itself, ties that make a one-line disclaimer on social media look less like a principled boundary and more like a calculated hedge.
ISNA's decision to drop Masood shows the organization understands that certain associations carry a cost. The cleric's record, admitting he forced a child into marriage, defending child marriage publicly, was indefensible once it reached a wider audience. ISNA acted, if only after a news report forced its hand.
But the speakers who remain on the program present records that are, in some cases, equally troubling. Holocaust denial. Prayers for armed jihad against Jews. Defense of sex slavery. Public calls for attacks on Israel. An unindicted co-conspirator in the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil before September 11.
El-Sayed has sought to cast Republicans as "pedophile protectors" for what he describes as blocking the release of Jeffrey Epstein files. That line of attack sits uneasily next to his willingness to headline a convention that, until a news report intervened, was set to feature a cleric who admitted to child marriage. His campaign's broader associations with figures who traffic in antisemitic rhetoric only sharpen the contradiction.
Michigan voters running the numbers on El-Sayed's judgment can start with the company he keeps, and the company he refuses to leave.
