The Republican argument against electing Abdul El-Sayed as a senator is becoming perilously close to, Blistering rhetoric targeting the Democratic nominee in Michigan is among the most discriminatory — some would say bigoted — of any modern election.

The goal of President Donald Trump, GOP nominee Mike Rogers and now even Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno seems clear: Portray El-Sayed as un-American and unacceptable for public office in a key race that could decide the Senate’s majority.

The strategy is further polarizing a race also shaped by Trump’s unpopularity; soaring living costs; a trade war with Canada that hit border states such as Michigan especially hard; and splits between Democratic moderates and progressives.

But the ugly tone of the Michigan Senate showdown runs deeper than a single tight election with enormous stakes. It is consistent with the language and actions of a president who, in one of the first official acts of his first term, tried to impose a travel ban on Muslims — and who, when speaking of his first presidential predecessor, Barack Obama, rarely drops his middle name, Hussein.

Trump often seems to amplify cultural, religious and racial rhetoric at the most stressful political moments — like now, as he faces down the possibility of Democratic congressional majorities. Ultimately, it’s about portraying those who don’t share MAGA’s dogma, faith or majority-White race as somehow less authentically American.

This tactic, as applied to El-Sayed, goes beyond a campaign scare. It challenges constitutional principles and reveals a divide between Trump’s movement and those with a more mainstream view of religious and racial diversity and their defining role in US identity.

Trump’s comments on El-Sayed go from personal smears to mocking and stereotyping the Muslim faith — and, by implication, every American who shares it. He’s called El-Sayed a “jihadist”; said metal detectors would be needed at the Senate if he’s elected; and deliberately mangles his name as “Mohammed” and “Abdul Ramadan.”Trump seems to be equating being a Muslim with Islamist terrorism. On Thursday, he returned to one of his frequent tropes — that minorities see politics through one exclusive racial or theological lens. “If you’re Black, or if you’re Jewish, and if you vote for Abdul, you’re crazy,” the president said.

Rogers is more careful to avoid maligning Islam generally, saying that he wore the uniform of the US Army to safeguard the freedom of Muslims to pray as they please. He’s stuck to questions around El-Sayed’s political affiliations, not mocking his name or faith. But in their last debate clash, Rogers said El-Sayed had links to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian Islamist group, and questioned his loyalties. “Are you for America, or are you for these terrorist groups overseas?”Rogers asked. El-Sayed has disavowed the group.

On Wednesday, Moreno stripped away all pretense, going beyond the false critique that El-Sayed may be a terrorist or a sympathizer to arguing effectively that he should be barred from office simply because of his faith.

“This character Abdul El-Sayed can be nowhere near Washington, DC,” Moreno said at a Trump rally in Ohio. “Do you think he understands that concept that our rights come from God almighty, that Jesus came here for our salvation?”Moreno added. “He should be nowhere near Washington, DC, and (GOP nominee) Mike Rogers is going to kick his ass on Tuesday.”

Article VI of the Constitution stipulates that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”The First Amendment says Congress “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”Unlike El-Sayed, Moreno was not born in the US — he’s a naturalized citizen from Colombia. But he implied the Michigan Senate nominee does not deserve the same rights because he’s not a Christian. Such a view might also bar Jews, Hindus and Buddhists, all of whom are currently represented in Congress, from government service.

Corey Brettschneider, a Brown University professor who hosts the podcast “The Oath and the Office,” said that the anti-El-Sayed rhetoric has troubling constitutional implications. “When you are saying we can’t trust people who are Muslims and that he’s going to need to enter a metal detector — unlike everyone else in Congress — to get in, that’s nothing less than a religious test for office.”Moreno’s sympathizers might point to the use of the word “Creator” in the Declaration of Independence to argue that the founders, many of whom were believers, regarded the new United States as an officially Christian nation.

But Brettschneider noted that George Washington and other founders took action specifically to ensure that the country did not have an official religion. “I don’t think Jefferson, who of course is a primary drafter of the Declaration, was a Christian nationalist, and the framers of the Constitution and the document itself are explicitly anti-Christian nationalism. It’s a rejection of theocracy,” Brettschneider said.

It is appropriate for El-Sayed to be questioned about his attitude to the Muslim Brotherhood and to other foreign policy positions that many Americans oppose.

And left-of-center parties in the US and elsewhere have sometimes not appreciated the concerns of voters who worry that their traditions could come under pressure from immigration or the diversification of their communities. Such omissions have created political space for populists like Trump.

But much of the GOP’s rhetoric has gone beyond the cross-examination common in campaigns and ignores important context about El-Sayed’s past.

The Brotherhood is a transnational Middle Eastern Sunni Islamist organization that was founded in Cairo, Egypt. Republicans have seized on old social media posts from El-Sayed’s half-sister describing how their mother — who left in El-Sayed’s early childhood — had been active in the organization in the ’70s.

El-Sayed wrote an article in the HuffPost in 2011 arguing that if the Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt, instead of its ruthless military rulers, the consequences could be more favorable than many people thought. This all came in the context of the Arab Spring uprisings, when tyrannical governments all over the Middle East were falling and long-persecuted opposition forces like the Brotherhood were emerging as alternatives.

After the toppling of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak in the Arab Spring uprisings, the Brotherhood’s political wing won democratic elections in Egypt under Mohamed Morsi, who became president. Hope suddenly rose that freedom would thrive in Egypt. But Morsi’s rule ended amid huge protests triggered by his economic reforms, and he was later ousted in a military coup. The Trump administration has designated some chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations, including over support for Hamas.

But the complex context is often missing in the Michigan furor. And since many voters are unfamiliar with the history, Republicans can use the Brotherhood as a vague proxy for Middle Eastern groups in a way that sounds threatening.

In a town hall meeting earlier this month, El-Sayed rebuked a questioner for assuming “that because I am Muslim, that somehow I would have some allegiance to something that is not our Constitution.”He added, “For me, that Constitution is the guiding light.”This heated debate also comes against the backdrop of the political tumult unleashed in US politics over Israel’s response to the Hamas terror attacks on October 7, 2023, that killed around 1,200 people in Israel. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have died alongside many of the movement’s operatives in the operation.

At the same time, many Democrats as well as Republicans are uneasy with El-Sayed’s positions on Israel and his calls for a change in US foreign policy toward the Jewish state.

But a new CNN/SSRS poll Thursday casts doubt on whether the attacks are working in a state with a large Muslim minority and amid signs Democrats are uniting behind El-Sayed after a bruising primary. He led Rogers by 49% to 42% among likely voters.

On Tuesday, Michigan’s voters will decide whether El-Sayed wins a Senate seat as America’s voters decide whether or not Democrats will control the chamber.

But the race in Michigan will leave scars. It has turned into a deeper argument than the normal clashes between Republicans and Democrats, becoming a platform for a struggle over religious diversity, pluralism and the Constitution. Ultimately, it opened a new front in a perennial political question: What does it mean to be an American?