The Unity & Justice Fund — a super PAC controlled and funded by CAIR Action, the lobbying arm of the Council on American-Islamic Relations — sent out a fundraising email last week taking full credit for Abdul El-Sayed's razor-thin Michigan Democratic Senate primary win. The email didn't just celebrate the victory. It announced a national strategy: "we're building a movement in Masjids" across the country.
Masjids are mosques.
El-Sayed, a former public health official, defeated Congresswoman Haley Stevens by roughly one point — 48.5% to 47.5% — in the August 4 primary, overcoming what multiple outlets described as an 8-to-1 spending disadvantage. CAIR Action's super PAC claimed it helped "mobilize tens of thousands of Muslim and Middle Eastern voters to turn out" for El-Sayed. The Unity & Justice Fund funneled $175,000 last month to Fighting for Michigan PAC, the largest outside group backing his campaign.
That $175,000 came from the same organizational network led by Nihad Awad, the head of CAIR, who publicly said he was "happy" about the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. That's the guy writing checks to install a U.S. Senate candidate.
El-Sayed, for his part, spent the primary railing against his opponent's support from AIPAC — the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — calling it "foreign" intervention in American elections. Apparently $175,000 from a PAC run by the lobbying arm of a group whose leader celebrated a terrorist massacre doesn't count as foreign-flavored intervention. Just the pro-Israel money.
The usual defense from CAIR's corner is that they're simply a civil rights organization engaging in civic participation. Which is an interesting way to describe a group the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have all designated as a terrorist-linked entity, and which was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing case in U.S. history — the Holy Land Foundation trial.
What makes this particular fundraising email remarkable isn't the boasting. Political groups brag about victories all the time. It's the specificity of the strategy: organizing inside mosques, nationally, as an explicit political project. They're not talking about voter registration drives at community centers. They're talking about building political infrastructure inside houses of worship — and telling you about it in writing.
El-Sayed now faces Republican Mike Rogers in a general election that could determine control of the U.S. Senate. Rogers and the GOP have already begun tying El-Sayed to CAIR's network, and the pile of receipts isn't getting any smaller. Between the $175,000 from the CAIR-linked PAC, the fundraising email about mosque organizing, and Nihad Awad's public cheerleading for October 7, the opposition research folder is writing itself.
Most political scandals require some detective work. Leaked documents, anonymous sources, months of investigation. This one arrived as a promotional email, formatted for mobile, with a donate button at the bottom.
