The new Michigan senator’s father-in-law, and an aunt and uncle of his wife, Sarah Jukaku, spoke to The Wire on the significance of this victory.
US Senate-elect Abdul El-Sayed with his Indian-origin wife Dr. Sarah Jukaku. Photo: Instagram.
Kalaburagi (Karnataka): “Thank you, thank you for everything. There is no doing this without you and I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else,” Abdul El-Sayed said as he hugged his wife Sarah Jukaku on Wednesday (November 4) in front of cheering supporters as he was projected to win Michigan and become the US’s first Muslim senator.
El-Sayed met Sarah while studying at the University of Michigan. They have been married for
While El-Sayed has Egyptian ancestry, this victory has become a reason to celebrate for people in Karnataka’s Bhatkal in Uttara Kannada as well. US-born Sarah, who is a psychiatrist and a physician, comes from an Indian-origin family from this region.
Sarah’s aunt Aliya Nazneen Jukaku, a paediatrician, told The Wire, “We feel very good about it [El-Sayed’s victory], Alhamdulillah. Obviously, it is something to celebrate, isn’t it?” After staying in Bengaluru and Saudi Arabia for many years, Nazneen is now settled in Bhatkal.
She fondly remembered how El-Sayed visited India multiple times to attend family weddings. “He [El-Sayed] has come to Bhatkal for a couple of family weddings. But in the last few years they have been busy and haven’t come.”
Jukaku Shamshuddin, Dr. Sarah Jukaku’s grandfather and former minister and lawyer. Photo: Fazalur Rahman Jukkaku.
Sarah’s grandfather Jukaku Shamshuddin was a prominent lawyer and deputy finance minister in B.D. Jatti’s cabinet and an electricity and water minister in S. Nijalingappa’s cabinet. He passed away on March 27, 1974 at the age of 51.
Shamshuddin had six daughters and four sons. Sarah’s father, Tayeb Jukaku, the third son, is a nephrologist who moved to the US after completing his MBBS at Bangalore Medical College.
“This is a movement that has the potential to spark a revolution in politics in the USA [and] hopefully across the world that hopes to cleanse it from corporate greed and power hungry corrupt political elites [and] to hold responsible those who start wars that are destructive rather than fight for peace that brings stability and peace to all peoples,” Tayeb told The Wire, after the mid-term election results were announced.
“The personal attacks on Abdul [El-Sayed] and his extended family has backfired spectacularly and has lost the ability to help the haters in election politics,” he added.
‘Hope Abdul will serve people like our father’
Sitting thousands of kilometres away in Chennai, Tayeb’s elder brother Abdussalam Shamsuddin Jukkaku was closely following the US midterm elections.
“I was trying to find out how things were going on. And of course, we always expected this win. But in between, the lead margin was very less. Anyways, it is great for everybody now, great victory, great result. My father was also in politics. Even today, people sometimes cry and tell me that your father did this for me, did that for me. I hope Abdul will do the same thing. I hope he serves people like our father,” Abdussalam told The Wire. “Of course, we are very proud of Abdul but we are proud of our father too.”
Abdussalam asserted that the mid-term results are probably a hint that ordinary people now fear of becoming “irrelevant”.
“[Donald] Trump will be there for two more years. I hope he doesn’t do silly things like dropping bombs in Iran. I was very, very despondent because everywhere in the world, capitalist people and capitalist societies are taking away all the wealth, even in India. So, the mid-term elections [in US] are a big win, in general. It is not just about Israel, Iran, war, and this capitalism, it is also the fear of ordinary people to become irrelevant, isn’t it?” he mentioned.
As El-Sayed held over 52% votes, Sarah’s youngest uncle Fazalur Rahman Jukkaku, who stays in Dubai, said that the victory was a hopeful event for Muslims across the world.
“Alhamdulillah it was a great victory with a clear margin so that the Republicans cannot play around and try to sabotage the victory,” he said.
‘Happy that our country has been able to look at a Muslim and get past the otherness’
El-Sayed was born and raised in Southeast Michigan. He was raised by his father, Mohamed, an Egyptian immigrant, and his stepmother, Jackie, who is from Michigan.
In 2018, he made an unsuccessful bid for Michigan governor, losing the Democratic primary to Gretchen Whitmer.
A Rhodes Scholar, El-Sayed earned his doctorate in public health from the University of Oxford in 2011, and completed his medical degree in Columbia University.
In 2015, he became the executive director of Detroit’s Health Department. Later, he was appointed as the director of the Wayne County Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services which includes Detroit.
El-Sayed’s campaign was centred around tackling the rising cost of living, expanding healthcare access and reducing corporate influence in Washington. “He is running for the US Senate because he believes life in America shouldn’t be this hard, and as your Senator, Abdul will fight to build a government that works for you, not Elon Musk, Donald Trump, or their billionaire friends,” his website mentions.
Abdul El-Sayed and Sarah Jukaku in Detroit during the campaign trial. “I am boundlessly blessed to have Sarah as my life partner and mother to our daughters. No one else I’d rather have by my side,” he wrote on X on November 3. Photo: X/@AbdulElSayed.
Speaking in the final moments of the campaign, Sarah said in Detroit, “With Abdul it’s what you see is what you get. Abdul is the same to me and my daughters as he is to you. He says the same things no matter where he is and no matter who he is talking to because he believes and means those things. And that’s what makes him such an unusual politician. No corporation, no billionaire, no special interest, no one tells him what to do or what to say, except maybe me sometimes.”
However, throughout the Senate campaign, Republicans have attacked El-Sayed over his Muslim faith and criticised him for opposing the US military adventurism in West Asia, and Washington’s support of Israel.
US President Donald Trump, for instance, referred to El-Sayed as a “Muslim radical”, “jihadist lunatic who hates our country”, a “Muslim Brotherhood member”, a “radical extremist” and a “terrorist sympathiser”. He even posted a photo of himself and his wife, Melania, next to an image of El-Sayed and his wife, who wears a hijab on Truth Social captioning it “two VERY DIFFERENT America’s.”
Similarly, US Vice-president JD Vance called him a “psychopath” and a “weasel” who should “shut his mouth”.
In his victory speech, the 42-year-old Senate-elect slammed Trump and Vance on Wednesday as he addressed his supporters at his election headquarters in Detroit. “JD, habibi [Arabic term of endearment], it is an irony – you are constitutionally obligated to swear me in in January,” El-Sayed said, shortly after he was projected to win against Mike Rogers.
“Donald, I know you struggle with my name, so when JD swears me in, you can call me ‘senator’. May we never have to see the likes of you in Michigan again,” he added, amid thunderous applause. “To all the parents who struggled to explain why the president openly mocks someone for their name or how they pray, let them know tomorrow that the bad guys lost.”
El-Sayed’s father-in-law Tayeb also underlined that the victory is significant since the Michigan voters saw “past the otherness that was created about his personality”.
“We are happy that our country has been able to look at a Muslim and get past the otherness that was created about his personality and help him win based on his values and his sincerity and authenticity. Great day for the USA and the word hopefully,” Tayeb said.
SA and the word hopefully,” Tayeb said.
