This story is adapted from the Slatest newsletter. You can sign up here to get it in your inbox every day.

Viral moments from the campaign trail often crystalize both the key issues in a race and how the candidates are responding to them. That’s what happened on Saturday when a heckler confronted Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, about whether he condemns the Muslim Brotherhood, which many consider a terrorist group. El-Sayed, who is Muslim, quickly answered—“Sure, yeah, absolutely”—before questioning the heckler, who identified himself as “Tommy,” about the thinking behind it. “You’re asking the question because implicitly you assume that I’ll have dual loyalties, right?” El-Sayed asked before paraphrasing John F. Kennedy’s famous line about whether his Catholic faith would make him allegiant to the pope. “I’m not running to be a Muslim senator. I’m running for the U.S. Senate and happen to be Muslim,” El-Sayed said, to applause.

Identity isn’t incidental to El-Sayed’s candidacy. He has talked about being the child of Egyptian immigrants, harshly criticized Israel’s war in Gaza, and taken heat for campaigning with Hasan Piker, a controversial left-wing streamer. Yet Republicans have openly attacked El-Sayed’s faith as he competes to become America’s first Muslim senator. Former Rep. Mike Rogers, El-Sayed’s opponent in next month’s election, has claimed without evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood funds El-Sayed’s campaign and suggested that El-Sayed’s family members have terrorist links. Donald Trump mocks his middle name, Mohamed. And Tommy, it turns out, is reportedly a former Republican staffer. So I asked my colleague Aymann Ismail, who has covered El-Sayed for Slate—and is........

© Slate