Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed headlined an Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) conference in Detroit over the Labor Day weekend, at which speakers criticised the United States and the West, praised early Islamic conquests and framed the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks around Islamophobia. Fox News Digital, which attended the event, reported that participants generally took positions critical of America, including at least one call from an audience member for a fatwa to be issued against lawmakers who backed a bill restricting federal funding for colleges involved in boycotts of Israel. The event's tone matters because El-Sayed is contesting one of the most closely watched Senate races of the 2026 cycle, one that could help determine control of the chamber.

At a panel on "Rising Islamophobia in the U.S.", a speaker labelled the higher-education funding bill, introduced by Republican Virginia Foxx and co-sponsored by Democrat Josh Gottheimer, "an anti-Muslim bill", prompting a man in the audience to call for a fatwa against those who voted for it, which drew applause from some attendees and a panelist. Other panellists accused Elon Musk of funding an anti-Muslim movement, criticised the censure of Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, and questioned aspects of the official 9/11 narrative, with one calling the War on Terror the "War of Terror". ISNA, founded in 1981, held the conference in Detroit, a city with a large Arab American population; El-Sayed has faced separate scrutiny over ties to socialist-aligned activists and a group with alleged terror links.