Sure: here's the analysis. AES is a Muslim social democrat who gained power in an intra-coalitional fight because him being a Muslim social democrat put him in a position to be credibly and loudly anti-Israel among people who have made that their primary litmus test. Previously, he cared enough about Middle East issues to put his name on a lengthy op-ed in defense of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, then to sign a petition calling for the president there to purge the media and police. Many Americans viewed the MB option as the lesser of two evils then, a democratically supported group in a country that had lacked such, but often changed their minds when, among other things, the media purge el-Sayed called for very predictably expanded to encompass not just state media aligned with the prior regime, but independent media the new regime opposed. el-Sayed never, to my knowledge, provided any indication he changed the substance of his views or his sympathies in the wake of those changes, and instead provides curt and general disavowals without elaboration, saying things like that he opposes every group that uses violence. I believe he, like almost every Muslim social democrat in the country, feels much more sympathetic to and at the very least conflicted about Islamist groups in the Middle East. He sees them as engaged in a righteous struggle against an oppressive and genocidal nation that has the support of the American foreign policy regime, which he broadly views as evil. As far as I can tell, his attitude towards Muslim leadership in those countries, or militant groups there, is that Israel is the bigger fish to fry, and inasmuch as he disagrees with their policy there is room to sort that out after Israel is handled, whatever "handled" looks like. I think his disavowals-without-elaboration of the Muslim Brotherhood are explained predominantly by him wanting to reach elected office in the United States, where the MB is considered a terrorist organization, rather than a substantive shift from what was clearly a considered position he felt strongly about. Because of his position as a Muslim social democrat, he gets a lot of support from explicitly and unambiguously anti-American leftists, such as Hasan Piker, and from Islamic organizations with views on the middle east that are mainstream among Muslims but which non-Muslim Americans would generally consider radical. People who oppose Israel rationally support him; people who support Israel rationally oppose him. Both his political position and his religion impact why he cares about what he cares about, how he cares about it, and how he will govern. Many Republicans will talk about this in over-the-top and ugly ways; the opposition to that from leftists who have made talking about "Zionists" and non-leftists in over-the-top and ugly ways has zero principle, while liberals are mostly rallying around the Democratic candidate as the lesser of two evils and deploying sincere-but-reflexive allegations of bigotry. All of this combines to make people say a lot of unhelpful and inaccurate things on this topic, one of the most unhelpful and inaccurate being that bigotry is the predominant motivation behind people questioning Abdul el-Sayed about Islamism and trying to make it taboo to press him on positions informed by his religion. xitter.cf/steady_drumbeat/status…