Georgetown’s Nathan Lean is a professional character assassin, a man who has dedicated his life to defaming and lying about anyone and everyone who dares to utter a critical word about the religious ideology that guides Islamic jihadists and incites them to commit mass murder. His chief targets include Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Maajid Nawaz and me, and in every case, Lean plays fast and loose with the facts, cheerfully purveying falsehoods even when he has been shown that they are false, so desperate is he to clear away all obstacles to the advance of jihad terror. He is also the lowest kind of thug, and has repeatedly tweeted out what he thinks is my home address and places that I frequent (he was wrong in both cases, but that’s beside the point), in an obvious attempt either to frighten me into silence or to signal to his jihadi friends and allies where I can be found and killed.
Lean’s idea of combating “Islamophobia” is not to call for reform in Islam, or to engage in discussion and debate with those who stand against jihad violence and hatred, but simply and crudely to attempt to establish that all those who call attention to and object to the activities of Islamic jihadis are very bad people. Even if this were true, it wouldn’t make the bombings, the beheadings, the mass murder, the sex slavery, the boasts of imminent conquest any easier to take. But Lean apparently hopes to pick off all those who speak out against jihad violence and Sharia oppression one by one, so that no one is left who dares to raise a dissenting note, even as the throats are slit and the bombs explode.
It is good in this video to see Asra Nomani call him out for his gutter tactics. What she quoted from him was only the very tip of a very large iceberg. Were anyone to care to assemble the complete works of this vicious little man, they would find it an appalling collection of slurs, smears, innuendos, mudslinging, defamation, lies, and worse. And his refusal to explain why he decries such gutter tactics but engages in them himself exposes his hypocrisy.
“Georgetown’s Nathan Lean Says Everything by Saying Nothing,” IPT News, February 24, 2016:
In just two minutes, journalist Asra Nomani exposed the empty and bullying nature of people pushing the “Islamophobia” narrative. The term is often used to stifle criticism of Islamism – a political movement aimed at imposing Islam on society – by casting it as inherently bigoted.
During a forum Tuesday devoted to the issue, Nomani confronted Georgetown University’s Nathan Lean, whose life is dedicated to combating “Islamophobia,” about his own behavior.
“I’m thrilled that you have an opposition to pernicious, nasty attacks,” Nomani said. “My question is, why do you engage in them?”
“We’ll take another question,” Lean said. His only comment was an attempt to smear Nomani, implying her question was not worthy of a reply because he disagrees with her. Nomani said he was misrepresenting her views.
Lean presents himself as a serious academic. He is the research director at the Pluralism, Diversity and Islamophobia project at Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.
Center Director John Esposito is a longtime ally of Islamist activists in the United States, defending Palestinian Islamic Jihad board member Sami Al-Arian and serving as a defense expert in the Hamas-support trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.
Lean’s dismissal of a legitimate question – on the video, Nomani backs up her description of his “pernicious, nasty attacks” with several recent examples – took place in an open forum on “Islamophobia.”
When challenged about it later, Lean mischaracterized the incident, claiming Nomani “threw a tantrum.” Watch the video above. It’s a wildly inaccurate claim.
Lean’s refusal to engage in a question presented professionally and politely seems to fly in the face of the ideals espoused by the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
“Academic responsibility requires professors to submit their knowledge and claims to rigorous and public review by peers who are experts in the subject matter under consideration; to ground their arguments in the best available evidence; and to work together to foster the education of students,” it says.
Lean may not consider Nomani a peer, but her career as a Wall Street Journal reporter made her a horrified witness of where unchecked radical Islamist thought can lead. Now, she’s part of a fledgling Muslim Reform Movement, which declares its full embrace of “a respectful, merciful and inclusive interpretation of Islam,” “for secular governance, democracy and liberty” and “for the protection of all people of all faiths and non-faith who seek freedom from dictatorships, theocracies and Islamist extremists.”
Lean and his colleagues could try to take issue with the reformists’ principles, but that might prove to be difficult. It is so much easier to ignore a legitimate question or smear the messenger.
That says it all.