Republicans attacking Abdul El-Sayed say he supports Shariah in the US. That distorts an old video.

Republican influencers and politicians have mounted faith-based attacks against Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim and former public health official, after his primary win.

On social media, X accounts falsely said El-Sayed supports making the Islamic code Shariah the U.S. law of the land. 

“He openly calls for Sharia law in America,” conservative influencer Avery Daye posted Aug. 8 on X. 

Her post plays snippets of a 2022 speech El-Sayed gave at an awards banquet for the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Oklahoma chapter. 

U.S. politicians have made similar accusations about El-Sayed, including Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Mace also attacked New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani about Shariah after his November win, which PolitiFact rated Pants on Fire. 

El-Sayed faces former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican, in the general election.

The X posts cherry-pick a small portion of El-Sayed’s 2022 speech, taking it out of context. In those remarks, El-Sayed mentioned an overturned state ban on Shariah as he reflected on Oklahoma’s history of discrimination and issued a call for unity. He did not call for Shariah to replace American laws.

Shariah, sometimes spelled sharia, is a wide-ranging set of rules that governs aspects of Islamic life, including religious practice, daily living and financial dealings.

In 2010, Oklahoma voters approved the Save Our State Amendment to forbid courts from using Shariah or international law when making decisions. A federal court struck it down in 2013, ruling it unconstitutional. 

The practice of using foreign law in state courts is not uncommon and generally not controversial, experts told PolitiFact Florida in 2014. For example, parties in international contracts frequently agree to apply a specific foreign country’s law to govern their agreements.

What El-Sayed said in Oklahoma

During his 16-minute speech, El-Sayed spoke about racist, deadly events in Oklahoma history, including the 1830 Indian Removal Act leading to the Trail of Tears, which killed thousands of Native Americans; the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, which destroyed Greenwood, an African-American neighborhood known as Black Wall Street; and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of a federal building by an anti-government white supremacist. 

Then he made the comment that X users shared on social media: “The state of Oklahoma voted in a referendum to amend the constitution to ban Shariah law. What does that mean? I don’t know. And yet the voters banned it anyway.”

Daye, the influencer, did not include El-Sayed’s full comments about the Shariah ban in her X post. Here are relevant portions of his remarks:

“The same exact forces that drove Native peoples from their land two centuries ago, destroyed Black Wall Street a century ago, bombed a building decades ago, and tried to ban Sharia law not a decade ago, those forces are alive and well today.” 

“The reason I wanted to go all the way back to the 1830s is because you can’t understand a Shariah ban without understanding the Trail of Tears. You can’t understand the efforts to uproot Muslim Americans without understanding the Tulsa massacre. You cannot understand the challenges we face today without understanding white supremacy. We have to set it in the context of our history. But here’s the thing: The beautiful thing about our opportunity today is that we have a choice in front of us about what we do next.”

He quoted the Quran and called on Muslims to pursue civil liberties and civil rights and be “witnesses for justice” whether they are working as doctors providing healthcare to low-income people or as business owners providing jobs.

El-Sayed quoted the first first words of the U.S. Constitution: “We the people. And what’s the rest? In order to form a more perfect union.”

He added: “Every time somebody tries to divide us, tells us that this group or that group does not belong because of the color of their skin, because of how they pray, because of where they come from, because of what language they spoke first — that’s antithetical to what it means to be American. But the work of perfecting is in deciding that we are going to show up with and for each other.”

In a 2025 interview, El-Sayed talked about his Muslim faith, telling Religion News Service, “I believe deeply in the role that faith has played in my life, in, you know, how it orients me to try and be a better person, to give more of myself, to know my fellow creation, to treat people — all people — with dignity and humanity and respect.”

He also said he believes in the separation of church and state and that he wants “to protect the kind of America where everybody can pray how they choose to pray, or choose not to pray at all.”

Our ruling

Social media posts say El-Sayed “openly calls for Sharia law in America.”

The posts show clips of El-Sayed delivering a 2022 speech, but he didn’t say what they describe.

The theme of his remarks was unity; he encouraged Muslims to work toward justice for everyone, even in the face of racism.

He mentioned an Oklahoma state ban on Shariah that was struck down by courts as he reflected on Oklahoma’s history of discrimination including against Native American and Black residents. He did not call for Shariah to replace American laws; in fact, he quoted the U.S. Constitution.

The statement is not only wrong but ridiculous. We rate it Pants on Fire!

RELATED: In Michigan Senate race, Mike Rogers falsely ties Abdul El-Sayed to Twitch streamer’s 9/11 comments

RELATED: No, New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is not ‘bringing Sharia law to America’