Fatten Elkomy sat across from FBI agents for approximately three hours while they asked her about her work at the Islamic American Relief Agency. Elkomy is the biological mother of Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Michigan. The FBI had raided her home.
Eight days before an election, and we're just now hearing about it.
The raid was connected to a broader federal investigation into IARA's Columbia, Missouri office, which was raided in October of 2004. The U.S. Treasury Department designated IARA for funneling money to terrorist organizations — including an al-Qaeda precursor, the Taliban, and Hamas. Elkomy worked at IARA from 1999 to 2004, the full duration of the period that drew federal scrutiny. The details of this raid have been buried for years while El-Sayed built a political career.
Elkomy's own account of the FBI visit was remarkably casual. She told the Columbia Daily Tribune, "All the conversation was trying to find how we do work and how I do work." Three hours of FBI questioning about your employment at a Treasury-designated terrorist-financing organization, and the summary is "how I do work."
El-Sayed's sister, Eman Abdelhadi — a professor at the University of Chicago — was more revealing. In an August 2024 piece for Zeteo, Abdelhadi wrote that she "flashed back to memories of the FBI raiding mosques, homes — including my own — and Muslim charity organizations."
That sentence alone should have been front-page news the moment El-Sayed filed to run for Senate. A candidate's own sister, in her own words, in a published article, confirming the FBI raided their mother's home in connection with a charity that funded terrorists. And the mainstream press couldn't find the story with both hands and a search warrant.
The organization Elkomy worked for wasn't shut down over a paperwork dispute. IARA was designated by the Treasury Department specifically for ties to Osama bin Laden's network, the Taliban, and Hamas. The federal government determined American dollars flowing through IARA were reaching groups that killed Americans. Elkomy was employed there for five years.
Mike Rogers, the Republican in the race, has made El-Sayed's foreign ties a central issue. The media response has been to frame those questions as Islamophobic. Except the FBI apparently had the same questions — and brought a search team instead of a focus group.
El-Sayed is running to represent Michigan in the United States Senate. The background check for that job is supposed to happen before the election, not after. Voters are the ones conducting it now, because the press decided it wasn't worth their time.
Elkomy worked at IARA from 1999 to 2004. The Treasury Department designated IARA for funding al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Hamas. The FBI raided the home. Abdelhadi confirmed it in print.