Anti-Muslim hate speech targeting Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed surged twentyfold following his Aug. 4 win in the Democratic primary, according to a new study.
Findings of the Washington, DC-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate, as shared with Anadolu, found that posts naming El-Sayed along with anti-Muslim bigotry averaged 155 a day between June 1 and Aug. 3, then rose to 3,099 a day on Aug. 4-10, soaring 1,895%.
Those seven days accounted for 56.7% of all 38,280 Islamophobic posts targeting El-Sayed tracked since Jan. 1, with volume peaking on Aug. 5 at 6,923 posts in a single day.
Separately, the center tracked 409,640 posts promoting anti-Muslim bigotry on US social media company X in the country between June 1 and Aug. 10, with the platform’s highest single-day total of the summer also seen on Aug. 5 with 11,883 posts.
The largest theme in the surge, the center said, involved posts describing El-Sayed as “an Islamic jihadist” and falsely linking him to Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Other posts claimed he intended to impose “Islamic law,” recast campaign donations from Muslim groups as “terrorist financing,” or combined anti-Muslim conspiracy theories of a so-called “Islamist and communist” taking over the Democratic Party.
