Islamic marriages

Different marriage to make the point

Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed set to share stage with Pakistani cleric who admitted marrying off his 13-year-old niece

Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Michigan's U.S. Senate seat, is scheduled to headline an Islamic convention in Detroit that also features a Pakistani cleric who admitted arranging the marriage of his teenage niece, and whose anti-Jewish rhetoric prompted Canadian activists to seek a visa ban.

El-Sayed is listed on the convention itinerary for the Islamic Society of North America's 63rd annual gathering, set for September 4, 7 in Detroit. His panel, titled "Cultivating God Awareness in a Turmoiled America," is scheduled for September 5.

Also on the convention roster: Tariq Masood, a Pakistani mufti, a cleric qualified to issue religious rulings, who in a 2021 sermon admitted to the marriage of his 13-year-old niece, according to multiple Pakistani media reports cited by the Washington Free Beacon.

El-Sayed's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The convention lineup raises pointed questions for a candidate who has built his national profile partly by attacking President Trump and Republicans as "pedophile protectors" over the handling of Jeffrey Epstein-related files. 

El-Sayed is now set to appear at the same event as a cleric whose recorded statements about child marriage were so alarming that Canadian activists in 2024 urged their government to block Masood's visa, citing what they called his "pedophilic rhetoric."

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Nearly 300,000 minors — the vast majority of them girls — were legally married in the United States between 2000 and 2018, the year statehouses finally began taking action.

Child marriage, defined as any marriage where at least one of the parties is under the age of 18, was legal in all 50 states until then. Seventeen states have since passed bans to end the practice.