The imam at the mosque where Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed regularly prays delivered a funeral eulogy for slain Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, calling him a "heroic martyr" and a "symbol of jihad", raising fresh questions about the company El-Sayed keeps.
Imam Abdelhamid Algizawi of the Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor held what he called an "absentee funeral prayer" for Haniyeh on August 2, 2024, just two days after the Hamas leader died from an explosive device smuggled into a Tehran guesthouse. The sermon, delivered in both English and Arabic, cast Haniyeh not as the head of a designated terrorist organization but as a righteous patriot who deserved paradise.
The Washington Free Beacon reported on the sermon after reviewing video of it posted online. Arabic portions were transcribed by an independent translator the outlet obtained for the review. El-Sayed's campaign did not respond to a request for comment, and whether the Senate nominee was present for the eulogy remains unclear.
Algizawi's words left little room for ambiguity. He described Haniyeh in sweeping, reverential terms from the pulpit:
"He is a symbol of jihad, a symbol of struggle, a symbol of patriotism, and a symbol of devotion."
The imam went further, framing any opposition to Haniyeh as opposition to the faith itself:
"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."
Algizawi also portrayed Haniyeh as a simple liberator, erasing any mention of the October 7 attacks on Israeli civilians that Hamas carried out under Haniyeh's leadership. Instead, the imam cast Haniyeh's death as an act of injustice:
"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 is not a prayer for a political figure who happened to die. It is a full-throated canonization of a man who led an organization responsible for massacring civilians, delivered from a pulpit in an American city.
El-Sayed, a left-wing Michigan Senate nominee, typically prays at the Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor, where Algizawi serves as imam. He also attends the Islamic Center of Detroit and the Wayne State University Islamic Center of Detroit, according to a source familiar with his practices. The Free Beacon's reporting makes clear that Algizawi's mosque is El-Sayed's primary house of worship.
El-Sayed's relationship with Algizawi extends beyond shared geography. In a separate sermon, the date of which was not specified, Algizawi used his pulpit to celebrate El-Sayed's primary victory, calling it a "very big victory for the Muslims, Hamdillah, and for the Ummah, and for the Islamic nation." The imam told his congregation they had an "obligation" to vote for El-Sayed in November to "change the society."
So the imam who eulogized a Hamas leader as a holy warrior also used his Friday sermons to campaign for El-Sayed. And El-Sayed's campaign has said nothing about any of it.
The Haniyeh eulogy is not the only sermon from Algizawi that sits awkwardly next to El-Sayed's public positioning. In 2022, the imam delivered a sermon denouncing homosexuality in blunt terms:
"Here in America, in America, there is, you know, it became a fashion these days: homosexuality and LGBTQ and something like that becomes a fashion everywhere. And even this has reached the Muslim community, and people ask what the [sic] Islamic stand on that... Islam as a religion refuse."
Algizawi argued that same-sex relationships "cannot bring stability to your life" and are "against human nature." He told his congregation that Muslims "cannot compromise their religion" on the issue, regardless of living in America.
Compare that with what El-Sayed posted during Pride Month. "This month and every month, I stand with the LGBTQ+ community in their struggle for equal rights and dignity," El-Sayed wrote. "I'll always fight for an America where all of us can live and thrive as we are."
El-Sayed also defended support for sex change surgeries for minors, likening the procedure to circumcision. The candidate presents one face to progressive voters and another to the congregation where his imam calls homosexuality a violation of human nature and Islamic law. Both audiences cannot be getting the real Abdul El-Sayed.
Algizawi is not the only religious leader in El-Sayed's circle whose public statements raise concerns. Imam Imran Salha of the Islamic Center of Detroit, another mosque El-Sayed attends, posted on social media in September 2024 defending Hezbollah's military operations against Israel.
"We can condemn atrocities of Hezb in Syria while also recognizing that they *are* making sacrifices for the sake of Palestine and frustrating the illegal zionist regime in unprecedented ways esp with recent hits."
Salha pushed back against critics who downplayed Hezbollah's strikes, writing that "anybody who continues to claim that Hezb is 'just hitting random trees' is using an old talking point that is just false." He framed skepticism of Hezbollah's effectiveness as an "unwillingness to recognize fact as fact."
That is a sitting imam at a mosque attended by a major-party Senate nominee publicly praising the military operations of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. El-Sayed's pattern of associating with figures who hold extreme views on terrorism and foreign policy is not a one-off coincidence. It is a pattern.
El-Sayed has built a public brand as a progressive champion, pro-LGBTQ+, pro-inclusion, fluent in the language of liberal coalition politics. But the mosques where he worships tell a different story. His primary imam eulogized a Hamas leader as a saint. That same imam preached that homosexuality violates human nature and Islam. Another imam in his orbit praised Hezbollah's attacks on Israel.
El-Sayed has faced scrutiny before over gaps between his public statements and the facts. His campaign's refusal to comment on the Haniyeh eulogy fits the same pattern: silence where accountability is required.
Michigan voters considering El-Sayed for the U.S. Senate deserve to know where he stands, not on a Pride Month social media post, but on whether he believes Ismail Haniyeh was a "heroic martyr" or the leader of a terrorist organization that slaughtered civilians. His party's own internal divisions over these questions make his silence all the more conspicuous.
A candidate who won't distance himself from a funeral prayer for a Hamas leader isn't being diplomatic. He's making a choice, and hoping nobody notices.
