Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate for the U.S. Senate, told MSNBC’s Katy Tur that his faith is “private” to him — but an American Thinker columnist argues that a candidate who declines to discuss his religion in public should not then draw on it to condemn Israel while staying silent on Hamas.
The piece, by Bert Peterson, is less a news report than a pointed examination of what it sees as a contradiction. Peterson reproduces a transcript of the exchange with Tur, in which the host notes that El-Sayed would be the first Muslim senator and asks what his faith means to him and how he thinks it connects to his politics.
El-Sayed’s answer opened with a pivot: “If there’s any jihad, it’s going to be the one against medical debt.” He went on to invite Donald Trump to join him in taking on medical debt and money in politics, then said, “Faith is important to me, but it’s also private to me. I want to be able to live in an America where nobody tells me how or what circumstances I can pray in, and I have no interest in telling anyone else how to do the same.”
For Peterson, that formulation raises a question rather than settling one. If El-Sayed favors religious freedom and the First Amendment, and if he sees no conflict between that stance and Islam, then why treat the content of the faith as off-limits? Peterson notes that El-Sayed is seeking what he calls effectively the second-highest office in the nation, and asks whether a “private” matter is the right frame for it.
From the campaign trail to the war
The columnist then moves to Gaza. He recounts that Israel, believing Hamas had been contained, was caught off guard on Oct. 7, 2023, and paid what he describes as a horrific price. Three years later, Peterson writes, El-Sayed sent a fundraising letter — later retracted — that made no mention of the atrocities of that day and instead focused on Israel’s response and the U.S. aid supporting it. In that letter, El-Sayed said, “I’m one of the few major Senate candidates who isn’t afraid to call what’s happening in Gaza a genocide.”
Peterson pushes back on the term. He asks why El-Sayed characterizes combat collateral damage — and, in his assessment, relatively low collateral damage — as genocide, and questions whether Israel, a nation of about 9.6 million people that includes roughly 1.8 million Arab Muslim citizens, would seek to wipe out the roughly 2 million Arab Muslims in Gaza, a territory he notes has no Jewish citizens. Israel has long had the military power to do so, Peterson writes, but has not used it, and even after Oct. 7 has continued trying to minimize civilian deaths.
The deeper objection is about asymmetry. If El-Sayed is genuinely concerned about genocide, Peterson asks, why does he say nothing about Hamas? He points to the group’s 1988 founding charter, which promised to “obliterate” Israel and cited Sahih Al-Bukhari’s hadith 2926 as scriptural backing — the passage in which Allah’s Messenger says the Hour will not be established until Muslims fight the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew hides will call out, “O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.”
Peterson notes that the charter’s language was softened in 2017, which he argues helped breed the complacency shattered seven years later. The Oct. 7 attack, in his description, was not merely military action but genocide — the killing of every man, woman, and child, with many tortured first — “genocide with a vengeance.” And El-Sayed, Peterson writes, calls those acts war crimes but never genocide, reserving that word repeatedly for Israel. The columnist poses the question bluntly: is there nothing a Muslim can do against “kafir” — non-Muslims — that another Muslim is permitted to criticize?
A hadith left out of the charter
Peterson then turns to what he presents as a fairness point owed to Islam and its prophet. He notes another Bukhari hadith, 3053, that Hamas did not include in its charter. In it, Muhammad is on his deathbed and asks for writing materials so that he may leave something after which his followers “will never go astray.” He then gives three orders, including, “Expel the pagans from the Arabian Peninsula, respect and give gifts to the foreign delegates as you have seen me dealing with them.” Peterson notes that the witness forgot the third order, and that those present went on to define the boundaries of the Arabian Peninsula.
From those instructions, Peterson draws his central theological claim: that Muhammad believed the jurisdiction of Islam was limited to the Arabian Peninsula, and that all of his battles took place within it. On that reading, Bukhari 2926 may have referred only to Jews on the peninsula. Either way, Peterson argues, the source of that hadith is Muhammad himself, and those words were spoken before his deathbed instructions.
That sequencing, in Peterson’s argument, means the earlier statement — the one Hamas cites as religious authority — is abrogated. His conclusion follows directly: Hamas has cited no scriptural authority for its charter pledging to destroy Israel.
The column does not purport to resolve the political race or the war; it is an argument aimed at readers, and it lands on a familiar American Thinker note. The publication closes the piece with a fundraising appeal, telling readers that the ability to speak freely is crucial to the republic and asking for donations to support its staff and keep its voice heard.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/10/el-sayed-s-private-religion/