Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed compared Islamic sharia law to canon law in an interview in August 2026, before his election to the US Senate.
“I don’t begrudge you your right to practise your faith as you choose. I don’t know why the idea that I could practise my faith as I choose is a problem,” El-Sayed told Fox News host Jesse Watters on the August 24 edition of Jesse Watters Primetime.
Watters had asked El-Sayed whether he still believed that opposing sharia law was equivalent to white supremacy, as El-Sayed had claimed in a 2022 speech. Watters is Catholic.
