Docs: Dem Darling Abdul El-Sayed's Mother Worked for Islamic 'Charity' That Helped Fund Bin Laden, the Taliban, and Hamas
If you’ve been paying attention to the ads released by the campaign of Abdul El-Sayed, you’ve probably noticed that many of them — and the most notable one in particular — focus on his stepmother’s family.
The focus on Jacqueline El-Sayed’s parents, who are marketed as the Michigan Democratic Senate nominee’s grandparents, is supposed to make El-Sayed likable and definitely not related to any shadowy organizations in the Middle East.
And you have to admit, it looks wholesome. It does the job, especially when you’re vying to become the first Islamic member of the Senate and a ton of your campaign money comes from your father-in-law, who has links to the Muslim Brotherhood:
I proudly endorse this message from my grandparents ❤️ pic.twitter.com/T6x1U2CFLa
— Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) August 12, 2026
However, as you may have noticed by my caveat, these aren’t the parents of El-Sayed’s birth mother, but the stepmom. And, as it turns out, his biological mother, Fatten Fathy Elkomy, is also connected to a terrorist organization. Those El-Sayed relatives, they just seem to stumble upon these things.
According to a report from The Midwesterner, a Michigan-based conservative outlet, Elkomy worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency, designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as a terrorist finance organization, between 1999 and at least 2004.
While the organization is nominally supposed to be a charity focusing on the usual stuff charities do — “health care, orphans, and disadvantaged people in areas of conflict,” The Midwesterner reported on Tuesday — it had a sideline in less-savory activities.
From the Treasury Department:
IARA is identified as a non-governmental organization (NGO) formerly affiliated with Maktab Al-Khidamat (MK), which was co-founded and financed by [Osama bin Laden] and is the precursor organization of al Qaida.
Information available to the U.S. indicates that international offices of IARA provided direct financial support for [Osama bin Laden]. IARA, MK and [Osama bin Laden] commingled funds and cooperated closely in the raising and expenditure of funds. IARA engaged in a joint program with an institute controlled by UBL that was involved in providing assistance to Taliban fighters.
In 2000, one of IARA’s Afghanistan leaders accompanied the Afghanistan MK leader on a fundraising trip to Sudan and other locations in the Middle East during which $5 million was raised for MK activities.
Information available to the U.S. shows that the overseas branches IARA provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to [Osama bin Laden] in 1999.
And, as White House correspondent and podcaster Natalie Winters noted, the organization also has ties to the Taliban and Hamas.
The charity was IARA-USA—the American office of the Sudan-based ISRA network. In 2004, Treasury blacklisted the global network, alleging that its officials supported Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, Hamas and the Taliban. pic.twitter.com/c8XWR3k8wH
— Natalie Winters (@nataliegwinters) August 17, 2026
Nor was her role minor.
“Elkomy’s link was not a one-time event or loose association. A contemporary report says she worked for IARA-USA beginning in 1999. A newly uncovered federal filing puts her name on transfer paperwork and correspondence involving the charity’s Iraq operations,” Winters noted.
“One transfer request bearing Elkomy’s name sought $24,607.34 ‘to Iraq office.’ The next court-listed record describes the matching $24,607.34 wire through Arab Bank in Amman, naming ISRA as beneficiary.”
One transfer request bearing Elkomy’s name sought $24,607.34 “to Iraq office.” The next court-listed record describes the matching $24,607.34 wire through Arab Bank in Amman, naming ISRA as beneficiary. pic.twitter.com/GQUArVTVry
— Natalie Winters (@nataliegwinters) August 17, 2026
And so on and so forth.
Years later, IARA-USA pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions and launder money. DOJ said the charity secretly funneled $1.375 MILLION into Iraq through accounts in Amman, Jordan. pic.twitter.com/HeLwacjrHi
— Natalie Winters (@nataliegwinters) August 17, 2026
Now, to be fair, several things. First, El-Sayed’s father divorced his birth mother some time after the two moved to the United States in the early 1980s. In a 2017 speech, El-Sayed said Elkomy “remarried a gentleman who was working as a translator in the Middle East and moved back to the Middle East,” which seems to imply (although not explicitly state) there was some level of estrangement between the two.
And Elkomy, meanwhile, has denied wrongdoing, telling the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2004 that “I’ve been working there serving orphans and children with at least one deceased parent, and it breaks my heart they’re not going to get any help.”
However, that’s precisely what quite a great many of these Islamic “charities” say when specifically confronted about where their money is going and who it’s going to. In the case of IARA, there seems to be a pretty solid paper trail that more of this money was going to Osamas rather than orphans, although that’s not for me to judge.
And it also highlights the fact that this isn’t the El-Sayed campaign’s first radical Islamist rodeo.
One of the top donors to his run is Tayeb Jukaku, his father-in-law, who serves on the Islamic Society of North America founders committee; that group makes “direct financial contributions” to the Muslim Brotherhood, according to a Washington Free Beacon report in July.
Lest we forget, too, the top surrogate of El-Sayed’s campaign is controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who says that “America deserved 9/11” and has a framed picture of the planes hitting the Twin Towers on his wall that’s visible during his livestreams. And to top it all off, his half-sister is a radical professor at the University of Chicago who was arrested for assaulting a police officer during an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement riot, Fox News reported.
But, yes, I’m sure his step-grandparents are wonderful people, at least in campaign advertisements. Maybe someone should tell them about the rest of the people he’s been associated with, because he needs a good talking-to and a grounding for that.
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