On November 3, Michigan voters chose Abdul El-Sayed for the United States Senate, according to a CBS News projection. CBS reports he will be the first Muslim ever elected to that body. Two years earlier, on July 4, 2024, British voters handed five seats to independents who rode the Gaza vote against Labour.
Many people are asking whether the Gaza vote is now a pattern on both sides of the Atlantic. We wanted to sit down and look at it with you, one official and one fact at a time.
We’ll tell you up front where we stand, and we’ll show our sources. If you see something we missed, or read the facts differently, please tell us in the comments. We read them.
- Shared: Gaza was an open campaign issue in both countries, and Muslim voters were not one bloc in either.
- Different: the British winners ran as independents against Labour; the American winners ran as Democrats.
- Our concern: American support for Israel is slipping, and the polling shows it.
What Happened in Michigan and New Jersey
Abdul El-Sayed (D-Mich.). He is a physician and the former director of the Detroit Health Department. CBS News projected that he defeated former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers. FOX 2 Detroit’s election-night count had him ahead 52% to 46%. Results are not yet certified. He won the August Democratic primary over Rep. Haley Stevens by less than one point.
His record on Israel is in his own words. In a 2025 interview reported by The Detroit News, he said, “I don’t believe that we should be subsidizing foreign militaries, period,” and he named Israel and Egypt among others. JTA reported in July that he had taken to calling Israel a “rogue state.”
Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz and President Trump, accused him of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood. He answered plainly: “I have never been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, I never will be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
After a March attack on Temple Israel in suburban Detroit, he drew criticism for saying “hurt people hurt people.” In his August 5 primary victory speech, he told Jewish voters his “commitment to Jewish safety, is the same commitment that I have to the safety of my own daughters.” On August 29 he apologized, as AP reported: “To anyone who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention.”
Adam Hamawy (D-N.J.). He is a former Army surgeon. The New Arab reports he helped save Sen. Tammy Duckworth after her helicopter was shot down in Iraq in 2004. AP called New Jersey’s 12th District, a heavily Democratic seat, for him over Republican Gregg Mele.
In 1995, Hamawy was a 26-year-old medical student. On July 24 of that year, he took the stand in a Manhattan federal courtroom as a defense witness for Omar Abdel-Rahman, the cleric on trial for a plot to bomb New York landmarks and for soliciting the murder of Egypt’s president. Hamawy had known him since 1991.
The government’s informant told the jury the cleric had urged him to kill President Mubarak during a 1991 trip to a conference in Detroit. Hamawy had been on that trip. Asked by the defense what the conference was about, he said, “It was an economy conference.” Minutes later, the prosecutor asked whether the cleric’s speech there was about trade or jihad. Hamawy answered, “It was a jihad.” He added that “usually when he spoke in public he spoke about jihad.”
Hamawy was never accused of wrongdoing. In 2026 he told the New York Times, “I condemn his violent rhetoric and actions.” Readers can weigh both answers for themselves.
Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) each won a fifth term, according to AP and Minnesota’s unofficial results. Both are long-standing critics of U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
Abbas Alawieh won Michigan’s 2nd state Senate District, which includes Dearborn, with about 71% of the vote, according to L’Orient Today, citing provisional AP results. He co-founded the 2024 “Uncommitted” movement, which urged Democrats to withhold primary votes from President Biden over Gaza. He worked on Capitol Hill for Reps. Andy Levin, Rashida Tlaib, and Cori Bush. He told the Michigan Advance, “The party was undoubtedly wrong about Gaza in 2024.”
One count says at least 36 Muslim candidates won or led their races nationwide. That figure comes from Muslim Network TV. It names no compiler, and it says the results are preliminary and “subject to official certification.” CAIR’s own count, released November 5, is larger: 97 wins in 21 states. It is also preliminary. We pass both along with that warning attached.
What Happened in Britain: The Gaza Vote of 2024
Britain’s Labour Party won a landslide in July 2024. Yet it lost five seats to independents. The National and The New Arab reported the results, confirmed by the UK Parliament’s official returns:
- Shockat Adam unseated Labour front-bencher Jonathan Ashworth in Leicester South by 979 votes. He said, “This is for Gaza.”
- Adnan Hussain took Blackburn, a Labour seat since 1955, by 132 votes. He said the same: “This is for Gaza.”
- Ayoub Khan beat Labour’s Khalid Mahmood in Birmingham Perry Barr by 507 votes.
- Iqbal Mohamed won the new Dewsbury and Batley seat by 6,934 votes. He said his win came from “a combination of several things,” not only Gaza.
- Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, held Islington North as an independent. He is not Muslim, but he campaigned for a Gaza ceasefire.
Four of the five were Muslim independents in seats with large Muslim populations. Labour’s trouble began with its Gaza stance. Campaigners targeted Labour MPs who had voted against a November 2023 ceasefire motion. Keir Starmer also suggested in an LBC radio interview that Israel had the right to cut off power and water to Gaza, then walked the remark back. That record is laid out in The Conversation.
We looked at what Europe can teach America earlier this year in our report on Europe’s warning to America. Britain’s 2024 election adds a new chapter to that story.
What the Two Elections Share
Gaza was an open campaign issue in both countries. The British winners said so on election night. In America, Alawieh built a movement on it, and El-Sayed made ending military aid part of his platform. These results alone don’t tell us how much Gaza decided the outcomes.
Muslim voters are not one bloc in either country. In Britain, Prospect reported that many Muslims kept voting Labour, while others chose the Liberal Democrats or the Greens. In America, Dearborn gave Donald Trump 43% in 2024, Kamala Harris 37%, and Jill Stein 19%, according to the city’s own results. A citywide count is not a count of Muslim voters, but it shows a divided community. The Gaza vote moved people in different directions.
Dan Wolf’s look at survey data on Islam and politics is a useful companion here. It reminds us to ask what voters actually believe, not just how they voted.
What They Don’t: Party Primaries and the Gaza Vote
Here is the biggest difference. Among the winners we looked at, the British challengers ran as independents against Labour. The American winners ran inside the Democratic Party.
Both countries elect most lawmakers by first past the post: the candidate with the most votes in a district wins. But Britain has no public primaries; parties choose their own candidates. A voter angry at Labour’s national line has another option: back an independent against it. In a seat with a concentrated vote, that can be enough. Hussain won Blackburn with about 10,500 votes.
America does have primaries. Here, a movement can capture a party’s nomination and then ride the party label into a safe seat. Hamawy, Alawieh, Tlaib, and Omar all won Democratic nominations in strongly Democratic districts.
There is a second difference: scale. British independents won small, compact seats. El-Sayed won a statewide race. He needed a broad coalition of voters well beyond any one community. That tells us something about the wider electorate, not only about Muslim voters.
Measure the Ideology, Not the People
We hold a biblical conviction about Islam, and we say it plainly. Islam is a false religion. It denies the deity of Jesus Christ and the Trinity. We also affirm religious liberty for every American, including our Muslim neighbors, and we oppose Sharia law and Islamic supremacism. We explained why those two legal systems cannot share the throne in Sharia Law and Constitutional Law Cannot Both Rule.
None of that means a public official should be judged by his faith. He should be judged by his own words and his own record. Opposing military aid to Israel is a political position. We disagree with it. But it should be named for what it is and debated on the merits, not on the candidate’s religion.
Why the Gaza Vote Matters for Israel
This is where our concern lies. If America’s support for Israel erodes, Israel’s enemies will be emboldened. That is not a prediction about the end times. It is a judgment about how hostile regimes read American resolve, as we discussed in Iran Miscalculated.
- Gallup found in February that 41% of Americans sympathize more with the Palestinians and 36% with the Israelis. Gallup notes the gap is not statistically significant, but its headline says Israelis are no longer ahead. A year earlier, Israelis led 46% to 33%.
- Among Americans ages 18 to 34, Gallup found 53% sympathize more with the Palestinians and 23% with the Israelis.
- Pew Research found in March that 60% of Americans view Israel unfavorably, up from 42% in 2022. That includes 80% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, and 57% of Republicans and Republican leaners ages 18 to 49.
- These polls measure sympathy and favorability, not support for military aid itself.
The Gaza vote did not create this shift. But it is one of the places where the shift now shows up on a ballot.
God’s word gives us the principle for Israel, without a timeline. To Abraham, God said:
And the psalmist tells us what to do:
A Word to Our Muslim Neighbors
If you are a Muslim reading this, thank you for staying with us. We disagree with you about the most important question there is: who Jesus is. We would rather talk about it honestly than pretend the difference doesn’t matter. Dan Wolf’s Reaching Muslims shows how we hope to do that, with honest questions, in truth and love. Read the Gospels for yourself, and ask what they say about Jesus.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV).
