Islamophobic, Antisemitic Rhetoric Run Side-By-Side With U.S. Senate Race

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 09/08/2026) Signs of antisemitism and anti-Muslim rhetoric have sprouted up throughout Michigan's U.S. Senate campaign, but political observers caution against assuming Jewish and Muslim voters will neatly line up behind Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed.

The question, they say, is whether outside provocateurs and identity-based attacks will define the campaign or whether the race remains focused on the standard issues, such as affordability or foreign policy.

That concern was on display last month when far-right activist Jake Lang brought an anti-Muslim demonstration he called the “Christian Crusade” to Dearborn. He called for Muslims to leave the country. He tore up a Quran during public comment at a City Council meeting as he told council members Muslims were trying to destroy the country.

“Muslims go home before we send you home. We have cruise ships. We have planes. We have trains and we’re going to pack them out with all the Arabs. You have to go home. We don’t want you here,” Lang said.

That event also drew Rev. Lorenzo Sewell, the Rogers campaign's faith advisor, who also condemned the city’s Islamic population.

MSU Muslim Studies Program Director Mohammad Hassan Khalil said anti-Muslim sentiment has become increasingly visible in national political rhetoric.

“Never mind the fact that, whatever one makes of his political views, the 41-year-old El-Sayed, the Michigan-born former Rhodes scholar with both MD and PhD degrees from elite institutions, has consistently proven to be a law-abiding citizen. And never mind the fact that myths of a Sharia takeover in U.S. cities like Dearborn are just that, myths,” Khalil said.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish, declined to attend the Michigan Democratic Party (MDP) nominating convention two weeks ago amid safety concerns she felt might re-emerge after the verbally hostile reaction pro-Israel elected officials like U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Birmingham) received during April's endorsement convention.

Nessel is not the only Michigander to say that antisemitic rhetoric and the threat of violence have left their communities on edge.

El-Sayed apologized to Jewish Democrats last month for comments he made following the March 12 attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, when a 41-year-old man rammed a Ford F-150 containing gas and fireworks through the synagogue’s doors.

El-Sayed also campaigned during the primary with Twitch streamer and podcaster Hasan Piker, a controversial political influencer who has been accused of making antisemitic remarks. Rogers is currently using a Piker clip of him saying "America deserved 9/11" in paid TV ads.

Michigan State University professor Yael Aronoff, director of the Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel, said verbal, online and physical attacks have left Jewish communities on edge.

“To counter both rising antisemitism and Islamophobia, we must all be mindful of the words we use and the images we draw on as we debate and discuss the issues of the day, and work to create a community welcoming for all,” Aronoff said.

Making it difficult to break from the religious rhetoric tension is the fact that El-Sayed is the first Muslim nominated by a major party for U.S. Senate in Michigan. Rogers and Republicans have subtly or not-so-subtly made this a wedge issue in their campaign, adding fuel to the fire. Doing so may help Rogers pick up votes, but it also keeps the religious issues alive in the campaign.

The competing controversies have created an easy temptation to view the Senate race through a Muslim-versus-Jewish lens, said Saeed Khan, director of the Wayne State University Center for the Study of Citizenship.

“There’s this danger of placing Muslims and Palestine on one side and Israel and Jews on the other, in part because … it creates these highly problematic narratives that Jews are either mostly or singularly interested in Israel and even worse, that’s where their loyalties lie,” he said.

He said that the bigger divide he saw wasn’t one between the Israelis and Palestinians or Jewish and Muslim, but instead between the generations of Jewish people and generations of Muslim people.

He said younger Jewish voters may be more willing to criticize Israel’s government and support El-Sayed, while older Muslim voters could be more receptive to Republicans and Rogers.

The broader danger, Khan said, is that candidates don’t necessarily need to make religiously inflammatory arguments themselves. PACs, Super PACs, nonprofit organizations and online personalities can inject them into the campaign while candidates maintain some distance.

“I think the end around or the bypass that these campaigns can do in a very Pontius Pilate claim, ‘I have washed my hands clean of this,’” Khan said.

University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy lecturer Jonathan Hanson said antisemitic and Islamophobic rhetoric is real, but the electoral question is whether voters allow the loudest voices to determine how the 2026 midterm election will be framed.

“The big question is whether the race becomes dominated by these debates provoked by the extremists,” Hanson said. “Are we going to have a Senate campaign that’s about culture wars and fights over the most extreme views or will the campaign be more focused on the issue that people say they care about?”

Complicating any effort to move beyond religious identity is El-Sayed’s historic candidacy itself. As the first Muslim nominated for U.S. Senate by a major party in Michigan, his faith has repeatedly surfaced in attacks from Republican politicians and conservative activists, even as Rogers has focused attention on El-Sayed’s association with Piker.

Hanson said another complication is that accusations of antisemitism and Islamophobia can themselves become political weapons, discouraging nuanced discussions of Israel, Palestine, Judaism, Islam, and Middle East politics.

“Supporting the rights of Palestinians to have their own state does not mean supporting terrorists,” he said. “Supporting or being opposed to the actions of a prime minister and a right-wing government in Israel does not make one antisemitic automatically.”

He was reticent to even talk about it, because of fear of attacks for just bringing up the subject. His hope for the general-election campaign is that disagreements remain focused on policies and actions rather than becoming judgments about entire religious or ethnic groups.

“We have to have the ability to look at the specific actions and policies and imagine alternatives and not make this about, sort of, group identity politics,” Hanson said. “I don’t know how to get there.”

Jason O’Connor, director of education for Florida-based inSIGHT Through Education, said what Michigan is experiencing is part of a broader argument over who belongs in the American political community.

“You have this whole wave of anti-immigrant sentiment going on across the country. What does the American nation look like, or any other country, and you get a sense of who’s a part of this community and who’s not? In many cases, both Jews and Muslims are being targeted,” O’Connor said.

Social media and digital culture make the problem more combustible, particularly among younger Americans, he said.

“For many teens, social media is gospel truth, and whatever they see in it, whether antisemitic, xenophobic, or Islamophobic content, once it takes root, it really impacts your perspective on things,” O’Connor said.

He said media literacy and critical thinking are increasingly important tools for recognizing bias, propaganda and attempts to reduce complicated political questions to emotionally powerful messages.

“Education has to pave the way for that solution. It’s very, very difficult to break people’s mentalities and how they see the world,” he said.

He said extremism and radicalization can end up leading to violence, murder, and ultimately genocide, like the Holocaust, which he teaches at inSIGHT.

For Michigan voters, the immediate test will be whether those messages become the defining feature of one of the country’s most closely watched Senate campaigns — or merely the noise surrounding it.

“Ultimately, where is the United States going to be in the next few years if we can’t get along, and if students are not educated about that, then the future seems very dim right now,” O’Connor said.