Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says Arabs ‘don’t produce science’ and ‘don’t win the Nobel Prize’ and blames the Muslim Brotherhood

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), spoke at a campaign stop for Republicans in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Oct. 26. Kennedy told the audience that Arabs do not produce science, win major prizes or write literature. He was campaigning for Mike Rogers, the Republican running for the state’s Senate seat against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed.

According to The Associated Press (AP), Kennedy stated, “There’s 500 million Arabs in the world and yet they don’t produce science.” He then named several honors, adding, “They don’t win the Nobel Prize.” He also stated, “They don’t produce literature.” Critics condemned the remarks overnight, calling them false and racially biased. The wire service added that an HHS representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Kennedy linked his comments to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group described as Islamist.

Rogers has linked El-Sayed to it, and El-Sayed has publicly rejected the organization. Kennedy stated, “Mike Rogers was talking about the Muslim Brotherhood. That’s something I can talk about.” He added that “All that tradition has been destroyed by the Muslim Brotherhood,” after first pointing to literary achievements of Islamic civilization during the 1200s. Newsweek reported that he also stated, “Talking about the Muslim Brotherhood is not Islamophobia.”

Arab winners appear in prize records

The wire service lists several Arab winners of the prizes Kennedy named. Naguib Mahfouz, an Egyptian writer, received the literature prize in 1988. Ahmed Zewail, an Egyptian-American scientist, won the 1999 chemistry prize for research in femtochemistry. Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman shared the 2011 peace prize, and Egyptian diplomat Mohamed El Baradei took the 2005 peace prize together with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Omar M. Yaghi, born in Jordan, shared a 2025 prize with two other chemists and also earned the Wolf Prize in 2018. Michael Atiyah, who had Lebanese roots, won a Fields Medal in 1966. The wire service also explains that being Arab concerns ethnicity and language, not religion. Arabs include followers of Islam, Christianity, Judaism and other faiths, and most of the world’s Muslims are not Arab.

Brad Woodhouse, the president of Protect Our Care, stated that the remarks “may be his ugliest episode yet.” Dr. Peter Hotez, founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor, posted on social media that Zewail, a former colleague, would not agree with Kennedy’s view. He added that Arab scientists during the Middle Ages preserved works by Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) described the remarks in a Tuesday statement as “a textbook display of unvarnished racism and bigotry.” Al-Monitor reported that Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, replied to Kennedy’s remarks on X, posting about a “coordinated campaign to delegitimize Muslim Americans.”

Separately, former President Bill Clinton stated in Florida the previous week that he is “tired of people denigrating Muslims for being Muslims.” At a Saturday rally in Detroit, El-Sayed responded to attacks on his faith, stating, “My name and my faith are not the reason you can’t afford your gas,” and adding the same about groceries. Michigan has a bigger share of residents who report Arab ancestry than any other state, about 2.2%, according to 2024 Census data.

Kennedy visited Corewell Health earlier on the day of the rally for an HHS push on food and nutrition at hospitals. The Muslim Brotherhood began in Egypt, in 1928. The U.S. has labeled several of its branches in the Middle East as terrorist organizations. Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates made the same designation in 2014. Former President Barack Obama has also rallied for El-Sayed in Detroit.