Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is facing backlash after comments he made during a television interview comparing Muslim sharia law to Catholic canon law.
In a heated exchange that aired on the evening of Aug. 24 on Fox News' "Jesse Watters Primetime," Watters asked El-Sayed if he thinks opposing sharia — the religious law of the Islamic faith — is akin to "white supremacy."
Watters pointed to a 2022 speech El-Sayed made for the Oklahoma branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations where he likened the 2010 passage of a law preemptively banning sharia in Oklahoma to white supremacist "forces" in the state who "destroyed Black Wall Street" and "drove native peoples from their lands." That law passed with over 70% of the vote but was struck down by a federal judge.
Responding to Watters, El-Sayed said: "I don't begrudge you your right to practice your faith as you choose. I don't know why the idea that I could practice my faith as I choose is a problem."
"Nobody is trying to push sharia law on anyone else," he continued. "Just like I hope nobody is trying to push canon law on anybody else, because we live in America, where you should have the freedom of your religion."
He said that with Muslims comprising around 1% of the U.S. population, preemptively trying to ban sharia law "seems to me to be deliberately targeting the Muslim community because they're different."
Watters and El-Sayed also sparred during the interview on topics including immigration enforcement, environmental issues, transgender medical procedures, taxes, Iran, and the economy.
Difference between canon law and sharia law
Sharia law, which governs Islamic religious practice along with family matters and financial transactions, also deals with aspects of political governance and public law, forming part or all of the political and legal systems in several Muslim-majority countries.
Canon law, on the other hand, regulates only the Catholic Church's internal structure and functions, including rules about clergy, sacraments, and other ecclesiastical and administrative norms. It does not function as a civil or political legal code for the state or for non-Catholics, as sharia can for Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Catholics are generally expected to obey the just civil laws of their countries, and canon law does not affect those laws.
Catholic media personality Michael Knowles mocked El-Sayed's position on X, writing: "[T]he Catholic Church requires ministers to use plant oils in sacraments with the blessings of a bishop, so why shouldn't courts allow Muslim men to have four wives?"
Kyle Shideler, the director and senior analyst for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy, wrote on X that El-Sayed's comparison between canon and sharia law is "deliberately misleading."
He noted that sharia law contains elements that conflict with U.S. laws, including "Islamic marriage contracts which conflict with policies on child welfare," among others.
The Democrat is set to face Republican nominee Mike Rogers in the general election in Michigan this fall.
El-Sayed was born in Michigan to Egyptian parents. An epidemiologist, if elected he would be the first Muslim and the first Egyptian-American elected to serve in the U.S. Senate.
