RFK Jr. sparks backlash after false claims Arabs 'don't produce science'

WASHINGTON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the US Secretary for Health and Human Services, singled out Monday the Muslim Brotherhood as the reason why “500 million Arabs… don't produce science” and “don't win the Nobel Prize.” His statements drew backlash and accusations of bigotry. 

“There's 500 million Arabs in the world, and yet they don't produce science. They don't win the Nobel Prize, they don't win the Fields Prize, they don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature,” Kennedy falsely stated in Grand Rapids. 

After citing the Islamic “golden age” of the 9th through the 14th centuries, during which Arab and Persian scholars widely translated and advanced ancient Greek works of mathematics, medicine and philosophy, Kennedy’s speech then took an ahistorical turn.

“All of that tradition has been destroyed by the Muslim Brotherhood,” Kennedy asserted, referring to the Islamist political movement founded in Egypt in 1928.

“They've created stagnant societies that do one or two things: hatred and war and victimization,” he added.

The comments by the Trump cabinet member added to a growing chorus of criticism over what critics have described as xenophobic and Islamophobic commentary by allies of US President Donald Trump ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections. Attacks have particularly targeted Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate in Michigan’s pivotal Senate race, who would make history as the first Muslim US senator if elected on Tuesday.

The factually false comments are the latest from Kennedy, who has a history of dubious assertions, largely about vaccines and vaccine safety, and occasional outright denials of medical consensus on public health matters. 

Journalists and commentators on social media also quickly pointed out a number of Arab figures who have won Nobel prizes in literature and the natural sciences. Naguib Mahfouz of Egypt, considered the 20th century’s greatest Arab novelist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988.

Just last year, Jordanian-born Palestinian-American Omar Yaghi co-won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Another Egyptian, Ahmed Zewail, was previously awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1999.

Several Arab figures — including political leaders Anwar Sadat and Yasser Arafat in the late 20th century and a leading activist from the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, Tawakkol Karman of Yemen — were awarded Nobel Peace Prizes.

The region’s relatively low output in science and technology as compared with that of the West and East Asia has been a matter of scrutiny among commentators and historians inside and outside the region for the better part of a century.

Professor Juan Cole, a historian of the Islamic world at the University of Michigan, pointed out that when Trump sought to appoint a White House official to work with pharmaceutical firms to rapidly develop the COVID-19 vaccine during his first term, “he turned to a Moroccan, Moncef Slaoui.”

“Vaccines used to take ten years to develop, but scientists, including those of Arab and Muslim heritage, made it happen in less than a year,” Cole told Al-Monitor via email.

Political bait

Kennedy’s latest remarks quickly drew condemnation from progressive Democrats and civil society organizations like the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Matt Duss, the former top foreign policy adviser to the progressive independent US Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, said the recourse to bigotry in the race against El-Sayed reflects “not so much a strategy as just panic.”

“Islamophobia is really all they’ve got to mobilize their voters on,” Duss told Al-Monitor.

Trump has repeatedly referred to El-Sayed as a “jihadi.” Other critics of El-Sayed led by his Republican rival for the Senate seat, Mike Rogers, have pointed to a 2012 social media post by El-Sayed’s half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, that notes their mother, Fatten Elkomy, participated in Muslim Brotherhood activism in the 1970s.

Such participation was common among Egyptian students in that decade amid an upswing in the Brotherhood’s social organizing. The group in Egypt formally renounced violence in the 1970s. 

Trump signed an executive order in November 2025 initiating a process to designate certain Muslim Brotherhood chapters as terrorist organizations. 

Rogers on Monday denied explicitly using the term “terrorist” to describe El-Sayed, but has repeatedly suggested the progressive Democrat has ties to extreme and foreign ideologies without offering evidence.

“If you are going to go to the United States Senate, we need to know: are you for America or are you for these terrorist groups overseas,” Rogers said during their second public debate on Oct. 21.

Rogers also suggested El-Sayed may have relatives on a “terrorist watch list” during their first debate on Oct. 8. He declined to produce evidence when asked by moderators at least four times to do so.

Democrats hit back

El-Sayed, who was born in Rochester, Michigan, in 1984 to Egyptian parents, has disavowed the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islamism. After earning his undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan, he completed his M.D. and Ph.D. at Columbia University and earned a doctorate at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He later became an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University.

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut condemned the rhetoric, warning of a broader effort to target Muslim Americans.

“I really think everyone needs to pay attention to this coordinated campaign to delegitimize Muslim Americans,” wrote Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut on X in reply to Kennedy's remarks.

“I'm tired of people denigrating Muslims for being Muslims,” former US President Bill Clinton said in a speech in Florida last week.

El-Sayed responded to attacks during a rally in Detroit on Saturday: “My name and my faith are not the reason you can't afford your gas [and] not the reason you can't afford your groceries,” he said. 

Al-Monitor has reached out to El-Sayed’s campaign for comment.