Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed rose on race-heavy Columbia papers and Soros family funding, critics call the work thin scholarship that greased a fast political climb.

Abdul El-Sayed, the 41-year-old Michigan Democrat running to become the first Muslim U.S. senator, spent years at Columbia Medical School producing research that zeroed in on race, ethnicity, and religion. The Post reported that he penned more than 50 papers between 2007 and 2014, with more than a dozen locked on those themes.

That record is now under fire from Republicans and even some Democrats who say the conclusions went far beyond the data. El-Sayed’s campaign did not return a request for comment.

The same years that produced the papers also brought him a $90,000 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship and a later boost from Jeffrey Soros, the Hollywood producer and nephew of George Soros. Critics say the money and the research worked together to vault a researcher who never finished medical training into public office.

Columbia papers put race and Sharia at the center

One 2011 study, “Suicide among Arab Americans,” examined Michigan suicide deaths from 1990 to 2007 and was published in the Public Library of Science journal. National Institutes of Health grants helped fund it.

The paper found Arab men had roughly half the suicide rate of white men. Arab women had a rate 24% lower than white women. El-Sayed tied the gap to religious teaching.

“According to traditional interpretations of Islamic Sharia law, suicide is considered haram or forbidden, and families of suicide victims can face ostracism within the Muslim community,”

the paper stated. Critics said the study suggested white Americans could learn from Muslim communities shaped by that rule.

Another 2011 paper, written under the name Abdulrahman M. El-Sayed, drew sharper pushback. It linked “interethnic mating” to worse birth outcomes for Arab mothers.

“Our findings suggest that interethnic mating may be associated with increased risk for adverse birth outcomes among Arab ethnicity mothers,”

the paper concluded. Opponents slammed the work as a racist, eugenics-style argument that Arab women should have children only within their own ethnic group for better health results.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas weighed in on X after the paper resurfaced.

“This is ‘science’ with a pre-ordained racist & eugenics outcome,” “Scary stuff.”

Ian Kingsbury, who directs the Center for Accountability in Medicine at Do No Harm, told the Daily Caller News Foundation the same paper was not serious science.

“basically advocating Arab separatism and isolation by couching it in pseudoscientific terms.” “The reality is that this is lousy scholarship that does not support the conclusion that he makes.”

Other titles from the Columbia years kept the same focus: “Birth outcomes among Arab Americans in Michigan before and after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001” (2008); “Ethnic Inequalities in Mortality: The Case of Arab Americans” (2011); “The Color of Debt: Racial Disparities in Anticipated Medical Student Debt in the United States” (2013); and “Racial and insurance-based disparities in the treatment of carotid artery stenosis” (2015).

Soros fellowship money and a closed-door Hollywood fundraiser

In 2012, El-Sayed won the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. The award delivered $90,000 toward a Ph.D. in epidemiology at Columbia. Jeffrey Soros has said he interviewed El-Sayed as a finalist for his parents’ program.

Fox News reported that Jeffrey Soros later hosted a closed-door fundraiser for El-Sayed at his Los Angeles home. Guests could give as much as $57,800. Video from the event captured the host describing the long relationship.

“Speaking of privilege, I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Abdul since 2012. I got to interview him as a finalist for my parents. Fellowship, the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans.”

Breitbart noted that El-Sayed remains listed among the fellowship’s alumni, and that the same Soros political network has poured millions into committees backing his Senate run. That cash trail sits uneasily beside El-Sayed’s own attacks on billionaire influence.

He has argued that “the fundamental corruption of our politics has been the system that allows corporations and would-be oligarchs and billionaires to buy politicians.” The family that helped pay for his graduate work and still support his campaign is the same family whose name is synonymous with big-donor Democratic spending, including backing for prosecutors who have faced fierce pushback, as seen in the Fairfax County recall fight over Steve Descano.

From campus papers to Detroit health chief, without a medical license

El-Sayed graduated from Columbia in 2014. The next year he became executive director of the Detroit Health Department. He never entered residency training and never obtained a medical license.

That résumé gap matters to voters who hear “doctor” and assume clinical practice. His public career moved from race-and-religion research to city health leadership to a statewide Senate bid without the standard medical pipeline most physicians complete.

Julian Epstein, former chief counsel for the Democratic House Judiciary Committee, said the newly aired papers should force a harder look from moderate Democrats.

“We already knew he was a bigot, but this is over the top,” “In the same way he used his antisemitic hate to try to win the primary, now we see he’s used his half-baked pseudo intellectual eugenics science to fatten out what looks like a pretty thin research record and perhaps persuade his more radical supporters that is really down with racial separatism.” “How much more evidence do moderate Democrats need in order to switch.”

Family Brotherhood scrutiny follows him on the trail

El-Sayed has also spent months under scrutiny over reported family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement that seeks sharia rule in Muslim-majority countries. He now says he disavows those ties.

Kyle Shideler, director of homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy, has described the Brotherhood’s aims in blunt terms: to keep Muslim Americans from assimilating, to use U.S. political power for causes abroad, and ultimately to impose Islamic law and build a caliphate. Whether voters accept El-Sayed’s disavowal is now part of the Michigan race.

The pattern critics describe is straightforward. Race-focused papers built an academic brand. A Soros fellowship paid for the next degree. Family allies later opened Hollywood checkbooks. A health department title followed without a medical license. A Senate campaign now asks Michigan to treat that path as preparation for national power.

Taxpayers and primary voters are entitled to read the papers, follow the money, and decide whether this is expertise, or ideology with a grant number attached.