Sandhya

A politician who is about to wield influence in Washington is always subject to scrutiny. Abdul El-Sayed’s rise to the US Senate has Michigan talking, but his Indian connection at home is interesting. Very interesting. Bhatkal is a name Indians remember from some of the darkest years of Islamist terrorism in this country. His wife, Dr Sarah Jukaku, traces her family roots to Bhatkal in Karnataka - a town whose name became notorious for the formation of the Islamic terrorist group - the Indian Mujahideen - that carried out multiple terror attacks in India. The terror group’s leadership included brothers Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal along with Yasin Bhatkal masterminding major serial bomb blasts across the country. His father-in-law, Dr Tayeb Jukaku, served on the founders’ committee of the Islamic Society of North America and held leadership positions at CAIR Michigan. Both organisations were named as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing case. El-Sayed’s own record raises questions that deserve answers and they begin in Egypt. In 2012, he signed a statement supporting then-President of Egypt Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader, and backing his controversial decree shielding presidential decisions from judicial review. The statement also called for the media and police to be purged. A year earlier, El-Sayed had written that fears of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover should not deter American support for Egypt’s pro-democracy protests. Then there are the 2012 posts by his half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi. She wrote that her family had long been associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and referred to their mother’s activism in the organisation in the 1970s. So, the American leftist media can celebrate a historic victory all it likes. But a historic victory does not make a politician’s past and present disappear.