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  • 2017-12-11 (xsd:date)
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  • Is George Soros 'Grooming' a Pro-Muslim Brotherhood Gubernatorial Candidate in Michigan? (en)
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  • In late November and early December 2017, a Facebook post reported without any evidence that a candidate for governor of Michigan is being groomed by billionaire philanthropist George Soros and is sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood. The post, which prompted troubling comments, appears to have been inspired by an April 2017 story in the far-right tabloid WND.com (formerly WorldNetDaily). It reads: The idea that George Soros, a Hungarian-American Jew, is pulling the strings in a plot to take over the U.S. (this time vis-a-vis the Michigan gubernatorial race and candidate Abdul El-Sayed) threads into the ubiquitous anti-Semitic conspiracy theory known as the New World Order. The theory posits a secret cabal of rich (and Jewish) financiers are angling to establish an authoritarian global government and, among other things, force America to become more diverse. El-Sayed is not sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, but he's not the first Muslim American to step into public life only to have that accusation lobbed at him. After Gold Star father Khizr Khan spoke in support of Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in 2016, he was falsely accused by anti-Muslim conspiracy trolls of being a Muslim Brotherhood operative. El-Sayed has said publicly he is a firm supporter of the separation of church and state -- which puts him at complete odds with the Muslim Brotherhood, an international theocratic movement that aims to combine religion with government. El-Sayed is an American progressive, a political movement left of liberalism that seeks things like universal health care, an increased minimum wage and equality for the LGBT community. He is also pro-choice. His stances on LGBT and women's reproductive rights place him in polar opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood. Ani Zonneveld, president of the organization Muslims for Progressive Values told us the Muslim Brotherhood's views on those issues are similar to conservative Christians in the U.S. in that they want to legislate anti-gay and pro-life policy due to their religious beliefs. What is true is that El-Sayed is indeed a well educated Muslim Doctor in Detroit. At 32, he is the youngest person to have served as director of Detroit's Health Department. Born in Michigan to immigrant parents from Egypt, he earned an M.D. from Columbia University in 2014 and a PhD in public health from Oxford University in 2011. During the course of his education he was awarded several prestigious scholarships including Rhodes, Marshall and the Paul and Daisy Soros fellowship in 2012. Paul Soros, George Soros's now-deceased older brother, launched the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans with his wife in 1998. It is a competitive, merit-based program that every year accepts 30 immigrants or children of immigrants who are pursuing graduate school in the United States and can demonstrate that they will make significant contributions to the United States though their future work, fellowship director Craig Harwood told us. About the selection process, Harwood said: We asked El-Sayed's campaign about the accusations made in the post and a spokesperson referred us to an August 2017 profile in The Guardian in which he flatly denied each of them in an interview with journalist Drew Philp: (en)
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