Chuck Ross writes for the Washington Free Beacon about the latest dubious move from Michigan’s Democratic US Senate candidate.
Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is scheduled to speak at an Islamic convention this weekend—six days before the 25th anniversary of 9/11—on a panel alongside a “9/11 truther” and a Muslim cleric conspiracy theorist who has called for an “examination” of the official narrative surrounding the terrorist attacks.
El-Sayed is headlining the Islamic Society of North America’s annual convention in Detroit on Saturday. There, El-Sayed will speak on a panel to examine a “turmoiled America” alongside left-wing pundit Cenk Uygur and Zaid Shakir, an outspoken New Jersey-based cleric, according to a convention itinerary.
Both men have promoted conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11, in which al Qaeda operatives killed 2,977 Americans.
“I no longer believe [sic] official 9/11 story,” Uygur declared in a social media rant in February. Uygur, who hosts the Young Turks YouTube show, is now pushing debunked claims about Israeli involvement in the attacks, including the “dancing Israelis” myth, an antisemitic conspiracy theory that posits that five Israeli spies filmed and celebrated the terrorist attack. “I didn’t know we arrested Israeli spies who were here to ‘document the event,’” wrote Uygur, who is the uncle of Hasan Piker, a close El-Sayed ally who has said that “America deserved 9/11.”
Uygur was widely mocked for, as one outlet described it, “going full 9/11 truther.”
Shakir has similarly called for an “examination” of what he described as “glaring weaknesses and inconsistencies” in the official 9/11 narrative. He has argued that the U.S. government used the attacks to “launch a war on Islam,” and he directed followers to the writings of David Ray Griffin, a leading 9/11 conspiracy theorist who has argued that the United States orchestrated the attacks.
El-Sayed’s appearance alongside the conspiracy theorists comes as his own record of seeking to minimize the horror of 9/11, and to draw equivalence between 9/11 victims and casualties of the war on terror, is under scrutiny.
