How Abdul El-Sayed overcame Islamophobia in Michigan’s Senate race

DETROIT — When Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s newly elected senator, stepped to the microphone at his victory party, he gave praise to Allah.

He introduced himself with his full Arabic name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, which he had joked on the campaign trail contains “sounds that come out of parts of people’s throats they don’t know they got.”