During a Saturday appearance on MS NOW, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed responded to questions about his family’s alleged connections to the Muslim Brotherhood by comparing the scrutiny to what John F. Kennedy faced decades earlier. He told host Ali Velshi that the inquiries seemed designed to suggest he holds divided allegiances. El-Sayed is seeking to become the country’s first Muslim senator. Velshi raised the volume of questions El-Sayed receives about the Muslim Brotherhood, terrorism, and radical Islamism. El-Sayed answered that the core purpose of those questions is to insinuate dual loyalties. He said he recognizes a long pattern of such concerns in American political history. El-Sayed explained the parallel this way: “when John F. Kennedy ran for president, he was asked about whether or not his allegiance would be to the Constitution or to the pope and the Vatican… and he had remind people he was not running to the first Catholic president, he was running to be the next president of the United States. I’m not running to be the first anything – I’m running to be the next senator from my state.” Candidate addresses sister’s old posts and other past comments in separate interviews He added that the Constitution protects every American’s right to follow any faith, and that as a Muslim he knows how important that protection is because his own rights face constant threats. The latest exchange followed a Washington Free Beacon report from the previous week. The outlet said El-Sayed’s half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, had written on social media in 2012 and 2013 about family members belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood. In one post on X, she wrote: “Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college #respect.” Abdelhadi teaches as an associate professor at the University of Chicago and shares a mother with the candidate. Hours before that report appeared, El-Sayed had told NBC’s Meet the Press on October 11 that he had no ties to the group. Days later, NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Llamas pressed him on the posts and asked him to explain them. El-Sayed replied, “Yeah, Tom. It’s funny to me. I was born in 1984, down the street in Rochester Hills. I was raised here in Michigan, went to the University of Michigan, rebuilt the health department in the city, led the health department in this county. And you want to ask me about what’s happening in Egypt in 1970? Are you serious?” He continued, “I have no ties. We have no ties.” When Llamas asked specifically about his mother, El-Sayed said he had never discussed the matter with her and that he was not raised by his mother. He described the claims as “hearsay evidence from a tweet” and stated, “This is not serious.” Llamas noted that El-Sayed has previously criticized the president over issues of truthfulness, so viewers expect straightforward answers from him as well. Separately, El-Sayed has described Israel as just as “evil” as Hamas. On the MS NOW program, he called it a “crazy thing to assume” dual loyalties for a candidate who is running to protect the right to choose, LGBTQ rights, religious freedom, and the rights of people who choose not to pray. A last month survey showed that El-Sayed was seven points ahead of Republican candidate Mike Rogers. Most polls tracked by The New York Times currently show El-Sayed ahead of Republican Mike Rogers with Election Day a few weeks away. Rogers, whom El-Sayed called a coward for skipping a debate, has been trying to make up ground as the election closes in. His campaign has questioned El-Sayed’s account of his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, while El-Sayed has accused Rogers of backing Trump and a pro-war agenda at the expense of Michigan residents.