When anti-Muslim politics stopped being a whisper

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed will be the first Muslim to sit in the U.S. Senate. He got there through a campaign in which his religion was the case against him — from his Republican opponent Mike Rogers, from sitting members of Congress and from President Donald Trump, who stood on a stage in Port Huron nine days before the vote and said he was there to stop a “jihadist.”

Independent journalist Ali Harb covered the race from inside Michigan’s Arab American and Black communities. He joins Robyn Vincent to talk about why that language travels so easily now, why it so rarely costs the people who use it, and what a campaign like this leaves behind for Michiganders who were never on a ballot. Have thoughts? Email the show at metro@wdet.org

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