cultural historian of religion | here: Islam and America | challenging Islamophobia | @georgetown alum | views mine.
North Carolina
Joined January 2012
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Nathan Lean retweeted
I wrote about the Trump Administration's efforts to denaturalize Ilhan Omar, and what's at stake for all Americans. For @NewYorker
Nathan Lean retweeted
This is straight up incitement and it’s fucking disgusting that @cspan is clipping and promoting it.
Sen. @tedcruz (R-TX) says that if U.S. Sen. candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D-MI) is elected into the Senate and is placed in the Senate Intelligence Committee, "there is a very real risk that Americans will die as a result."
Nathan Lean retweeted
“Arabs don’t produce literature” is really something you can only say if you’ve never had a moment’s contact with genuine civilization. A mind totally consumed by television and self-help books.
Nathan Lean retweeted
Fifteen years ago, Trump was demanding Obama show his birth certificate to prove he's American. Today, Trump and his allies make clear that proof of being American is not dependent on records, but on something else.
Nathan Lean retweeted
Try to imagine a prominent host on any news or entertainment network in America asking a fellow on-air panelist ‘You want more Jews in positions of power? You want more Black people in positions of power?’
Just try and imagine that. Try.
Glad to see Bill Clinton speaking out to defend Muslim Americans. But he and Hillary Clinton — in policy and public rhetoric — have also contributed to the political climate in which these kinds of views have become normalized, and we shouldn’t forget that.
Nathan Lean retweeted
The Islamophobia in the Michigan Senate race is officially at nuclear-grade levels.
1. Ted Cruz claiming Abdul El-Sayed might share classified intel with the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorists
2. Trump calling AES "Mohammed" and mocking his name
3. Mike Rogers trying to tie AES's biological mom, whom he stopped being raised by when he was 3, to Al-Qaeda
This stuff is more pernicious than most people acknowledge today. Republicans could win this race by challenging AES's ideas, but they apparently can't help themselves but fear monger about his faith.
Florida Rep. Randy Fine wrote: “We need more Islamophobia, not less. Fear of Islam is rational.”
Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles: Muslims “don’t belong in American society.”
Alabama Sen Tommy Tuberville saying “The enemy is inside the gates" about Zohran, next to pictures of the Twin Towers burning on 9/11.
It has a very particular, distinct post 9/11 vibe to it. Really, really unhinged and ugly shit, and not nearly enough people calling it out.
Nathan Lean retweeted
I'd argue that the Islamophobia we see today is different than post-9/11 Islamophobia. In 2001, senior policymakers made it a deliberate effort to note that "Islam is peace" and that Muslims belong in the country.
The Islamophobia in the Michigan Senate race is officially at nuclear-grade levels.
1. Ted Cruz claiming Abdul El-Sayed might share classified intel with the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorists
2. Trump calling AES "Mohammed" and mocking his name
3. Mike Rogers trying to tie AES's biological mom, whom he stopped being raised by when he was 3, to Al-Qaeda
This stuff is more pernicious than most people acknowledge today. Republicans could win this race by challenging AES's ideas, but they apparently can't help themselves but fear monger about his faith.
Florida Rep. Randy Fine wrote: “We need more Islamophobia, not less. Fear of Islam is rational.”
Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles: Muslims “don’t belong in American society.”
Alabama Sen Tommy Tuberville saying “The enemy is inside the gates" about Zohran, next to pictures of the Twin Towers burning on 9/11.
It has a very particular, distinct post 9/11 vibe to it. Really, really unhinged and ugly shit, and not nearly enough people calling it out.
Pipes has advanced the lie of European "no-go zones" overrun by Sharia; written that Obama was a practicing Muslim; advocated racial profiling; denigrated "brown-skinned peoples" and their "strange food;" and hailed Geert Wilders as the "most important politician in Europe."
Deeply grateful to Dr. Daniel Pipes for this thoughtful review of "When Marx Meets Islam."
Dr. Pipes is one of the most important scholars of the Middle East and radical ideologies of our time. A historian who taught at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and the Naval War College, he served on the policy planning staff at the U.S. Department of State, held roles in the Department of Defense, and served across five presidential administrations - including two presidential appointments (vice chairman of the Fulbright Board and on the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace). He founded the @meforum and has spent decades documenting the threats of Islamism and the strategic challenges facing the West and Israel.
His review captures the book’s core argument with precision: that the survival of the U.S.-Israel partnership is decisive for whether the West ultimately prevails or succumbs; that Marxists and Islamists have formed a strategic alliance to subvert Western civilization, dismantle American systems, and destroy Israel through internal ideological subversion that exploits our commitment to tolerance; and that this is carried out through the coordinated efforts of students, professors, organizations, politicians, and foreign actors. He also notes the call for an “intolerance of intolerance”—clear red lines—and the personal dimension of reclaiming truth.
Thank you, Dr. Pipes, for your generous and serious engagement with the work. It means a great deal coming from someone with your record of scholarship and public service.
Nathan Lean retweeted
Re anti-Muslim rhetoric in Michigan elections, this is not new. During 2008 presidential elections, a copy of the film “Obsession”, about the dangers of radical Islam in the US, was sent to voters in swing states.
Nathan Lean retweeted
CNN pay a contributor who puts the word Islamophobia in scare quotes. I’m trying to imagine CNN paying a contributor who attacked a Jewish candidate while dismissing antisemitism in scare quotes.
I can’t.
This is how liberal media normalizes rightwing Islamophobia. Sadly.
Ilhan Omar isn’t being targeted over immigration fraud. She’s being targeted because she’s a Muslim American woman who refuses to conform to what the U.S. has always wanted Muslim Americans to be: obedient, politically powerless, and silent.
Nathan Lean retweeted
Orientalism 101: Arab and Islamic aesthetics without Islam or Arabs.
New look at Timothée Chalamet and Anya Taylor-Joy in ‘DUNE: PART 3’.
(Source: empireonline.com/movies/news…)
Nathan Lean retweeted
Unlike the raid on John Bolton, the targeting of Omar has elicited zero condemnation from NYT, WSJ, and Washington Post. theintercept.com/2026/10/15/…
Nathan Lean retweeted
The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person. The common good can be safeguarded and the requirements of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment: effective systems of detention have been developed that protect citizens while at the same time do not completely deprive those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption. #NoDeathPenalty
Nathan Lean retweeted
Several years ago, I wrote about how, for a long time, English translations of Rumi stripped Islam from his poetry, giving the illusion that non-Western groups or Islam have not contributed to rich civilization.
newyorker.com/books/page-tur…
Nathan Lean retweeted
My beef with Abdul:
He says he’s a doctor. He’s not. He’s unlicensed.
He’s for abolishing the police. He deleted the tweet, but CNN found it.
His staff denied he’s a dual citizen w Egypt. Video shows Abdul saying he’s a dual citizen and he summered in Egypt.
He refuses to condemn the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran.
He blames terrorism on America’s policies.
He calls Israel bloodthirsty. Who uses that language?
He says he hasn’t taken a penny of corporate contributions, but his FEC report shows he received $1.9 million in contributions from 629 corporate executives, including from Nvidia, Google and Pfizer.
Abdul is a conman.
Nathan Lean retweeted
She was banned from Uber, now she flys on Airforce One. Should be one of the biggest scandals in America. A woman who has hurled vicious racist abuse at Black women and all Muslims. Where is the media? Where is the outrage at Trump? Why the normalization of far right extremists?
Nathan Lean retweeted
I am afraid that Francesca has been mislead. The term antisemitism was coined by a Zionist (Steinschneider in 1860) in criticism of a scholar (Renan) who was actually a Judeophile and believed that Semites were inferior to the Aryan race. He did not - however - believe that speakers of Yiddish (Ashkenazi Jews) were Semites. He thought they were too 'civilised'.
Steinschneider had form. In 1838 he and two lifelong friends (one of whom was later the editor of the Jewish Chronicle) created a secret Zionist society at the University of Vienna. The reason he called Renan an 'antisemite' was because he wanted to advance the idea that the Ashkenazim had some meaningful connection to the Levant. He wanted - in other words - to define Jews as a 'race'.
No wonder this move was (nineteen years later) taken up with enthusiasm by a far-right journalist who most people (including almost all Zionists) credit with inventing the term - Wilhelm Marr.
Then as now, Zionists and Nazis are united in claiming the Jews are a race. They are not.
So the term 'semite' as advanced by Renan did not refer to the Ashkenazim. Do you know who it did refer to? Yes, Muslims. Much later Renan wrote that he had consecrated his life to the Jews and revealed an a note published after his death that he was 'without pity for Islam. I wish Islamism death with ignominy.'.
So, the term semite - as used by Renan - originally did not refer to Ashkenazi Jews at all and only - instead - to Muslims.
I wrote about this. Link in replies.
