Interfaith Alliance joined the chorus of condemnation for Republican U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio for claiming a Muslim politician should be banned from the nation’s capital and from public office for not believing Jesus died for humanity’s sins.
“This character Abdul El-Sayed can be nowhere near Washington, D.C.,” Moreno said of Michigan’s Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate during an Oct. 28 political rally near Columbus. “Do you think he understands the concept that our rights come from God Almighty, that Jesus came here for our salvation?”
Critics swiftly pointed out the U.S. Constitution’s explicit ban on religious tests for office, with Interfaith Alliance President Paul Raushenbush among those critics.
“Sen. Moreno swore an oath to uphold that U.S. Constitution, but clearly he has not read it — or does not agree with it,” Raushenbush said. “The naked Christian nationalism of his comments last night represent an attack on Muslims and on all non-Christian Americans.”
Raushenbush, an ordained Baptist minister, also described Moreno’s comments as part of a “dangerous and extreme pattern in which senior elected officials, from President Trump on down, have spread the idea that the U.S. is a Christian nation in which the government should embrace and enforce a narrow and discriminatory religious worldview.”
During a recent campaign event in Michigan, the president called El-Sayed a “jihadist” and part of an enemy “right here among us, local terrorists, local citizens that want to demolish our country.”
Trump’s supporters have followed that lead. Republican U.S. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said El-Sayed “sleeps in a bin Laden jersey” while U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas claimed El-Sayed is a “passionate supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood” and that “Americans will die” if he is elected and appointed to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
El-Sayed has repeatedly condemned the Muslim Brotherhood.
Campaigning for Republican Mike Rogers, El-Sayed’s opponent in the midterm election, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., falsely claimed Muslims have made no contributions to science or literature: “There’s 500 million Arabs in the world. And yet they don’t produce science. They don’t win the Nobel Prize. They don’t win the Fields Prize. They don’t win the Wolf Prize. They don’t produce literature.”
Those comments are so false that Associated Press and other fact-checkers created online databases to rebut Kennedy.
Five names summarily disprove Kennedy’s assertion:
- Ahmed Zewail: Egyptian, Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1999), Wolf Prize in Chemistry (1993)
- Omar Yaghi: Jordanian-born, Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2025), Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2018)
- Naguib Mahfouz: Egyptian, Nobel Prize in Literature (1988)
- Michael Atiyah: Lebanese ancestry, Fields Medal (1966)
- Moungi Bawendi: Tunisian ancestry, Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2023)
While explicitly aimed at El-Sayed, such criticism is also an attack that places all American Muslims in danger, Raushenbush said.
“This naked hate poses a direct threat to the Muslim community and seeks to stir up hatred and division in our country. Rejecting and condemning this hate is not a question of partisan politics — it is a fundamental duty for all those who believe in religious freedom and in equal rights for all Americans regardless of their identity.”
In conjunction with its condemnation of Moreno’s remarks, Interfaith Alliance announced the launch of a petition drive enabling Americans to affirm their support for the prohibition against religious tests for public office.
“As people of diverse faiths, we reaffirm our belief in the U.S. Constitution and its religious freedom protections. No candidate or nominee for public office, nor current elected official or civil servant should ever be barred from holding office because of their religious beliefs. We are all free to worship, pray, and believe however we choose,” the organization said.