Nathan Lean is the editor-in-chief of Aslan Media, an organization run by Reza Aslan, a board member of NIAC, a proven front group for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Lean is also an obsessive stalker who relentlessly scans the Internet for details about my resume and my wife and children, which he then enthusiastically publishes in hopes that I will be discredited, endangered, and intimidated into silence. Well, as far as intimidating me goes, it won’t work, and it will never work, but this creepy bottom feeder does keep me busy answering his libels in publications around the country.
The monomaniacal Lean has made it his business to try to get me canceled everywhere I’ve been invited to speak. The latest outlet for Lean’s obsession is the Napa Valley Register, as I am scheduled to speak on classical education (not Islam at all) at a conference sponsored by Napa’s Kolbe Academy in late July.
The stalker published this tissue of falsehood and distortions in the Register yesterday, “Kolbe should rescind invitation to contoversial [sic] speaker,” and today I followed up in the Register with the facts:
Kolbe Academy should be standing for free speech
Nathan Lean’s piece attacking me in the June 25 Napa Valley Register (“Kolbe should rescind invitation to controversial speaker”) is at least the fifth such op-ed Lean has written solely devoted to defaming me and spreading falsehoods about my record, activities and beliefs.
Lean, well aware of the many death threats I have received from Islamic jihadists, has published, on the Internet, information he believes to be about my location and my family with the clear intent of endangering me and my family and intimidating me into silence. The FBI is aware of these veiled threats from Mr. Lean.
The editors of the Register, of course, had no way of knowing that they were publishing the rantings of an obsessive and threatening stalker; however, now that he has spread his misinformation, I am grateful that they have given me the opportunity to set the record straight.
Lean claims that “civil rights organizations” have labeled me a “hate group leader.” In my own defense, I must also note that far from being an actual “hate group leader,” I have instructed the FBI, CIA, and U.S. military on Islam and jihad. It is noteworthy that he doesn’t name the “civil rights organization” in question “” probably because he knows it would weaken his case.
The organization he is referring to is the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has come under strong criticism in recent years for irresponsibly labeling as “hate groups” many organizations that simply disagree with its extreme political stances. It is also telling that the SPLC doesn’t classify any Islamic jihad groups as hate groups, despite their poisonous rhetoric calling for the mass murder of Americans.
Lean also claims that the Norway terrorist Anders Breivik cited my writings, without mentioning that Breivik cited many people, including Barack Obama, John F. Kennedy, and Thomas Jefferson.
Lean tries to mislead readers into thinking that Breivik was inspired to kill by my writings against jihad terror, but Breivik was not actually an opponent of jihad terror: he wrote about he wanted to aid Hamas and ally with jihad groups. Breivik also explained that his real inspiration for his violence was not us, but the Islamic jihad terror group al-Qaida, about which Nathan Lean has never written a critical word.
Nor does Lean mention that we are appealing the rejection of our trademark application for Stop Islamization of America. It is ironic that while large numbers of valiant secularist Turks and Egyptians are resisting the Islamization of their countries, that Lean would smear as bigoted an attempt to preserve American freedoms from subversion by provisions of Islamic law that even many Muslims reject as oppressive.
Lean criticizes my work exposing what he calls “the supposed threat of radical Muslims in the United States.” It is odd in the extreme that anyone would write about a “supposed threat” in the wake of the Boston Marathon jihad bombings, as well as the Fort Hood jihad massacre and the many foiled jihad plots around the nation in recent years.
It becomes more understandable when one notes that Lean is an employee of Aslan Media, an organization headed by Reza Aslan, a board member of what a federal court has determined to be a front group for the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Meanwhile, Lean claims that a board member of our organization once “recommended burning all mosques and sending Muslim immigrants “˜back to their countries,– trying to give the impression that these are positions of our organization. They are not, and no board member has advocated such positions.
“Spencer has argued that there is no distinction between American Muslims and radical, violent jihadists”: This is sheer misrepresentation. What I actually said was that U.S. Muslim organizations have been slow to expel violent jihadists or report their activities. They move freely among peaceful Muslims.
The Tsarnaev brothers, who supposedly bombed the Boston Marathon finish line, were members in good standing of the Islamic Society of Boston. The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s most vocal Muslim organization, has counseled Muslims in the U.S. not to speak to the FBI.
Lean claims that our ads “equated Muslims with savages.” In reality, the ad said, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.” The savages to which we were referring, obviously, were those jihadists who have massacred innocent Israeli civilians and celebrated those massacres.
Is Lean suggesting that all Muslims support those massacres? If so, it is he, not our ads or organization, who is presenting “violent acts of notorious terrorists like Osama bin Laden as normative of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims.” In reality, we have never done such a thing.
Lean wants the Santa Rosa diocese to rescind my invitation to speak, saying it should “follow the actions of the Boston diocese, which rescinded Spencer’s invitation to speak at a men’s conference in Massachusetts in March.”
Actually, it was the diocese of Worcester, Mass., following a demand made by a local Muslim leader named Abdul Cader Asmal, a man who is a vocal and open supporter and friend of convicted al-Qaida terrorist Tarek Mehanna. This is the lead Nathan Lean wants the bishop of Santa Rosa to follow.
It is ironic that, throughout Lean’s vicious attack piece, he speaks repeatedly of “hate speech,” when it is he who is spreading hatred, falsehood and defamation in his weirdly personal ongoing obsession with my activities.
My work is dedicated to defending the equality of rights of all people before the law and, above all, the freedom of speech. I hope that Kolbe Academy and the diocese of Santa Rosa will not bow to the tactics of an enabler of jihad terror like Nathan Lean, and stand firm in defending that most fundamental of freedoms.
It’s actually the Roman Catholic bishop of Sacramento, not Santa Rosa, who has the veto power over this one. And the problem, as ever, is that authorities generally don’t want controversy, and so fascist foes of free speech like Lean know that if they kick up a controversy of any kind, they can get what they want: the demonization of opponents of jihad terror, so that jihad terror can proceed unimpeded. The only thing to do in the face of this is to make it clear that it will be just as controversial or more so to cancel and side with the jihad enablers as it would be to proceed. And so Jihad Watch reader Bernie, who kindly set up the petition asking the Bishop of Worcester, Massachusetts not to cave to pressure from Islamic supremacists to cancel my talk — which got over 3,000 signatures — has set up another, making an appeal to the Roman Catholic bishop of Sacramento, Jaime Soto:
We respectfully request that Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento allow Robert Spencer to speak at the Kolbe Academy conference. We ask that Bishop Soto recognize that Nathan Lean’s charges against Robert Spencer are false and defamatory, and/or motivated by personal animus and political differences. We are alarmed that Bishop Soto would consider in effect enabling and abetting the silencing of a voice that speaks up for justice, our freedoms and for the persecuted Christians in Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, and elsewhere in the Muslim world. It would also be extremely odd for Bishop Soto to cancel Mr. Spencer’s talk on classical education because Lean objects to Spencer’s work resisting jihad terror, an entirely unrelated topic. Bishop Soto as a leader of the church should stand up against calumny and intimidation. Let Robert Spencer speak.
Please stand for the freedom of speech and the legitimacy of resistance to jihad terror, and sign it here.