Get ready habibis, Abdul El-Sayed’s ‘shawarma law’ is coming to the US

When the US’s first Muslim senator used Arabic in his victory speech, it cut through the torrent of vile racism Maga launched at him throughout his campaign

Repeat after me: yallah. YAH-luh. This versatile Arabic word means everything from “hurry up”, to “come on” to “speak to you later”. If you add a “bye” at the end, the meaning shifts to “please shut up, fool” or “speak soon friend,” depending on your intonation.

Next up: wallah. wa-LAH. Again, the definition changes depending on context and cadence. It can mean everything from “no way!” to “I swear to God.”

What exactly am I doing here? Helping to prepare you for the Arab and Muslim takeover of the US, of course. Now that Abdul El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants, is going to become the first Muslim senator in the US, it’s only a matter of time before everyone is going to say “yallah bye” to western civilization.

“I hope everyone is learning Arabic,” Laura Loomer, the informal Trump adviser and rightwing personality announced on X Tuesday night. Don’t worry, habibti, if people won’t learn by themselves, we’ll send them to re-education camps. And after that, we’re going to make good on El-Sayed’s threat to implement “shawarma law”.

Forgive me, I know El-Sayed’s victory over Mike Rogers in Michigan has been extremely difficult for Islamophobes and anti-Arab racists to come to terms with, particularly since it comes hot on the heels of Zohran Mamdani’s Muslim takeover of New York. So I would like to send everyone mourning the midterms my thoughts and sharia prayers.

Poor old Loomer, in particular, seems in need of prayers at this time; she is having a very public crisis of faith. “If God is in charge, why did he let our country get taken over by Muslims and communists?” she tweeted on Tuesday night. She then fired off almost 100 other X posts lamenting the “Islamic communist takeover” of the US and calling for a “full Muslim ban”.

Loomer is a professional racist and self-described “proud Islamophobe”, so it’s not surprising that she’s short-circuiting over a highly accomplished brown man getting elected to the Senate. But it’s worth stressing that plenty of more “respectable” people have been foaming at the mouth about El-Sayed and the handful of other Arabs and Muslims who were elected in the midterms. This morning, CNN asked the newly victorious Texas Democrat James Talarico if he was prepared to stand up to El-Sayed, stating “there are a lot of things he believes in that you might not share”. Last week, David Frum, a senior editor at the Atlantic, urged Democratic leadership to “curb the ugliest instincts of a Senator el-Sayed”. On Monday, James Kirchick, a former contributing writer to the Atlantic, called El-Sayed an “Islamist”.

You know what I think all these El-Sayed haters are struggling so much with? The fact that Michigan’s incoming senator, who had to deal with a torrent of vile racism throughout his campaign, including from his own party, didn’t water down his identity or his beliefs in order to get elected. He didn’t try to whiten his name or make himself seem less Arab or Muslim. He didn’t bow to demands that he condemn extremists who have nothing to do with him, or lean into a “politics of appeal”. He won by being himself. And in his victory speech he made sure to inform his detractors that he was going to continue being himself.

“My name is Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed,” the progressive Democrat said, before going on to poke fun at Republicans in a victory speech peppered with Arabic words. “Up until right about now, you might have noticed I always say “inshallah”, or “God willing”, whenever the outcome of this race was mentioned. But today, tonight, we can turn that inshallah into alhamdulillah. For the rightwing ops, that just means “praise be to God,” OK?”

El-Sayed continued his Arabic lesson with a jab at the vice-president. “JD, habibi, there is this delicious irony in the fact that you’re constitutionally obligated to swear me in in January.” (Habibi means “my love” and habibti is the feminine form of the word.)

In a country as diverse as the US it shouldn’t be a big deal to hear an Arab-American politician use Arabic in a political speech. But after decades of dehumanisation – dehumanisation so ingrained that New York Times columnists can casually compare Arabs to bugs and a congressman can compare Muslims to dogs – those few words of Arabic felt incredibly powerful.

Also powerful: the fact Michigan’s newest senator used his speech to call out the genocide in Gaza and the abuse directed at everyone who cares about it. “See, they try to call you hateful if you believe that Palestinian kids should get to grow up in the land of their forefathers without being murdered by our tax dollars,” El-Sayed said. “Michiganders, we want our taxes spent here, for schools here, and healthcare here, and infrastructure here. We don’t want our money sent to do apartheid or genocide or war.”

Not so many years ago, a speech like this by a newly elected senator called Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed would have been unthinkable. Strategists and pollsters would have said it was political suicide to support Palestinians, use Arabic in your speeches, and campaign as a proud Arab American.

But while anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia is still pervasive, things are slowly changing. Attitudes towards Israel have dramatically shifted, thanks to the genocidal war on Gaza. Meanwhile, Arabic words and Arab culture have slowly been infiltrating US culture. Drake named one of his 2026 albums Habibti. New York magazine had a cover piece about the Swana (south-west Asia and north Africa) scene in the city called Habibi city. The Palestinian comic Mo Amer has a show on Netflix. US rapper Macklemore just wrapped up a Free Palestine tour.

The right is still doing everything it can to try to paint El-Sayed as scary and divisive. “Abdul El-Sayed used victory speech to taunt ‘enemies’ rather than heal divisions after ugly campaign,” a New York Post headline blared, for example. But it is not divisive to refuse to pander to racists; to refuse to try to prove your worth to people who fundamentally see you as worthless. El-Sayed has realized that what the establishment likes to call “civility” is really just servility. He refused to play by the old rules and, alhamdulillah, he has won. The right may have their pitchforks out, but shawarma law is coming.