WASHINGTON – Michigan Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed once criticized former President Barack Obama’s drone attack on a U.S. citizen believed to be an Al Qaeda leader and issued a dramatic warning to the Muslim Brotherhood, resurfaced articles show. In a 2011 HuffPost article criticizing potential budget cuts, El-Sayed complained that lawmakers appeared to be working harder to avoid cuts to the Pentagon than to social programs, while highlighting concerns about wars in the Middle East. “Beyond a decade-long effort that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives (Afghan and American) in Afghanistan, our military conducts daily drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen,” he wrote in the article. Incoming Michigan Senator Abdul El-Sayed warned Egypt against pursuing overly aggressive redistributionist policies. USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect “More recently, in fact, one of these drone strikes carried out the extrajudicial killing of a American citizen. Shortly after, another was ordered to murder his 16-year-old son, also an American. Not to mention our misguided, baseless and tremendously damaging war in Iraq.” Earlier that year, Obama had authorized a drone strike to kill Anwar Nasser Abdulla al-Awlaki, a key al Qaeda organizer, who had dual citizenship with Yemen and the United States. He was the first American citizen deliberately killed in a government drone strike. The Muslim Brotherhood has since been designated a terrorist organization in Egypt. AP In another resurfaced article, El-Sayed worried that the Muslim Brotherhood and another Islamist party that took power after the 2011 Egyptian revolution might adopt radical socialist policies Following the resignation of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak in 2011, El-Sayed wrote multiple op-eds supporting the protesters who rampaged through the country and strategizing how Egypt could retain democracy. co-authored with then-Harvard University economics doctoral student Jisung Park, he warned that Egypt’s future would depend on its economic decisions. “The impressive results at the polls of both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafist Al-Nour party – both of Egypt’s Islamic parties – were probably more a product of their internal platforms and histories of social justice than of voters’ resonance with Islamic ideologies,” the two wrote. 47% of the seats in the Egyptian parliament, and the hardline Islamist Salafi bloc Al-Nour won 24%. Ironically, El-Sayed, known for his leftist views during his Senate candidacy, joined Park in warning Egypt against pursuing radical redistributionist economic policies. Both El-Sayed and Park made comparisons between how North and South Korea chose to develop. future of Egypt after the resignation of strongman Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Getty Images “In light of the corporate corruption that has [characterized] “The Egyptian economy during the Mubarak years, it may be tempting for these parties to implement radical redistributive policies from the beginning,” the two acknowledged. “But the ruling coalition must resist the temptation to shut down Egypt’s economy and redistribute its dwindling loot through [nationalizing] private industries or raise tariff barriers.” Both stressed that while North Korea’s centralized economy “led to faster economic growth in the short term (in the early 1950s),” Pyongyang ultimately “stagnated.” The article was unearthed by journalist Eitan Fischberger, who also unearthed a 2011 article in The Guardian in which El-Sayed urged Obama to back protesters in Egypt. “As an American, I ask you to support these freedom fighters because it is not only in our own American interest to promote democracy in the Middle East, but this is the only path that our ideals will allow us,” he argued in the article. “As an Egyptian, I ask you to support them because I know firsthand the injustice that the Mubarak regime has inflicted faced scrutiny during his Michigan Senate bid for his views on the Muslim Brotherhood, with which he denied having ties.” Brotherhood is known for its radical branches such as Hamas, and is designated as a terrorist organization in several Middle Eastern countries, although not in the United States. Around the time of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, El-Sayed’s half-sister claimed that her family was very supportive of the Brotherhood. El-Sayed also had relatives who worked for groups linked to the Brotherhood. Muslim Brotherhood, to “purge” the media and the police. Morsi subsequently mounted an infamous crackdown on journalists and protesters, which led to a coup against him. Incoming Michigan senator Abdul El-Sayed defeated Republican Mike Rogers by a significant margin last Tuesday. Getty Images The incoming senator now insists he repudiates the Brotherhood and has mocked the scrutiny he received during the campaign. He is Muslim. He and I have a Muslim brotherhood,” he joked during Crooked Con late last week.
