El-Sayed Played Key Role in Protesting Former Jihadist-Turned-Christian Speaking Event

Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed played a role in a walkout of a speaking event in 2007 that featured three former radical Islamic terrorists who converted to Christianity at the University of Michigan.

The event, titled “Terrorism: The World’s Greatest Threat,” was hosted by an affiliate chapter of the Young America’s Foundation and featured Walid Shoebat, Zachariah Annani, and Kamal Saleem, the Michigan Daily reported at the time. El-Sayed attended the university from 2003 to 2007, The College Fix noted.

Saleem said on his website that he was recruited by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestine Liberation Organization when he was age 7 and then trained to fight Israelis. After being sent to the United States to fulfill the mission of killing Jews and Americans, Saleem was treated by a Christian doctor following a vehicle accident. The experience motivated him to convert to Christianity and disavow his terrorist training.

Annani, who grew up in Lebanon, was raised to be a leader at his mosque but was caught up in Islamic rebel militias by age 13. In his teenage years, he secretly read passages of the Bible, specifically Matthew 11:28-30, in which Jesus invites weary and burdened people to rest in him, and he ceased fighting and converted.

After his conversion was revealed, Annani was held captive by other Islamic rebels, who shunned him after he refused to reconvert. He then entered the West as a Lebanese refugee.

Shoebat, on the other hand, is a Palestinian who claimed in his online biography that he was recruited by the PLO in the United States while attending Loop College in Illinois in 1978. “I was recruited at a hotel ‘terror conference,’” Shoebat wrote.

More than 20 minutes into the event, The College Fix reported, about a quarter of the audience left their seats, walked out in protest, and gathered at a different on-campus location to engage in a counter discussion, after attempting to prevent their peers from attending the event.

The walkout was organized by numerous student organizations at the university, including the Muslim Student Association, where El-Sayed served as vice president, The College Fix reported.

“[I am] elated at the success of the walkout,” El-Sayed said after the walkout, the Michigan Daily reported at the time. “We’ve done something good today, and we need to keep that going in the future.”

Similarly, other students who walked out of the event, such as Sirene Abou-Chakra, said at the time that “the main purpose of the protest is to really call out the fact that this program is generalizing an entire group of people and saying the actions of a few represent everyone.”

However, a student who attended the event until its conclusion told the Michigan Daily that the event’s purpose “was to educate the campus community about the dangers of Muslim extremism, not promote intolerance.”

El-Sayed faces Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., in November for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat.