In his victory speech at his campaign headquarters in Detroit, Sen.-elect Abdul el Sayed (D-MI) declared, “We don’t want our money sent to do apartheid, or genocide, or war.” El Sayed might have wanted to throw shade at Israel, which, throughout his campaign, he made out to be a boogeyman as he spread the blood libel of a Gaza genocide.
If el Sayed wishes to define himself as a man of principle rather than sectarian hatred, though, he might make good on his promise to target real apartheid, genocide, and war.
First, consider apartheid. While Israel does not conduct apartheid, many countries do. While Israel is a multiethnic, multisectarian state, the Palestinian Authority demands any future Palestinian state be Judenrein. Saudi Arabia openly discriminates against its Shia minority. Turkey has essentially become an apartheid state — Kurds, or at least those who seek to remain true to their culture, find themselves pariahs in society, their elected officials imprisoned and replaced by cronies of the Turkish regime. Turkey not only committed genocide against the Armenians and Pontic Greeks, both of which the state continues to deny, but also many enslaved Yezidi girls remain captive inside Turkey itself.
The Taliban bar girls from school beyond sixth grade and forbid women from attending universities — most jobs and public life remain off-limits. Article 153 gives ethnic Malays preferences in university placement, government jobs, business licensing, and housing. In Myanmar, the 1982 citizenship law denies the Rohingya citizenship. In Mauritania, the Arab-Berber elite treat the Haratine as an underclass, even legally enslaving them until 2007. Pakistan once marked Hindu and Christian holidays — now, most are gone. In Bangladesh, interim Prime Minister Muhammad Yunus, a darling of the Clintons, replicated the same policies after the coup that ousted Sheikh Hasina: Yunus imprisoned Hindus, Christians, and politicians who protected them, while releasing al Qaeda sympathizers and terrorists from prison. In Cameroon, 93-year-old dictator Paul Biya actively discriminates against Anglophones, creating the same dynamic that led, in Rwanda, to the anti-Tutsi genocide.
Speaking of genocide, el Sayed should speak up for Biafra. Nigeria’s leadership murdered more than 2 million Christians and animists between 1967 and 1970. Now, there is a slow-motion replay as Nigeria’s Islamist leaders deliberately seek to murder Christians. The core of Somaliland’s desire to reassert its independence also rests in the genocide it suffered at the hands of Somalia’s Cold War-era military junta. China’s assault on the Uyghurs occurs on an industrial scale.
Many Islamists deny genocide conducted by Sunni Muslims, even though, from the Palestinian Authority to Turkey to Malaysia and Mauritania, both apartheid and genocide are disproportionately a problem in Sunni Muslim societies. Part of the problem is denial and subjectivity. In 2009, then-Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan typified this when he welcomed then-Sudanese President Omar al Bashir shortly after the International Criminal Court indicted him for genocide.
“A Muslim couldn’t do such things,” Erdogan declared. “A Muslim could not commit genocide.”
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El Sayed also declares himself against war, but often being against war and genocide are mutually exclusive. Hamas’s covenant called for genocide against Jews. In 2002, then-Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah reportedly told graduates of the Islamic Institute for Education, “If they [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” That Nasrallah is now gone makes the region just a little safer.
Give el Sayed credit. Congress does not have enough members who care about genocide. He can do great things if he seeks to be more Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, embracing human rights objectively, rather than Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), using her position to pursue the atavistic animosities that created the failures that forced their families to emigrate. Unfortunately, el Sayed’s gleeful flirtation with antisemitism does not give much cause for hope.
Michael Rubin is the director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum, a distinguished fellow at India’s Usanas Foundation, and a contributor to Beltway Confidential.