cultural historian of religion | here: Islam and America | challenging Islamophobia | @georgetown alum | views mine.
North Carolina
Joined January 2012
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The God of Abraham is the *same* God in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and it doesn’t matter one bit that you don’t like that, or that you believe it’s not true. You don’t get to rewrite basic religious history.
Nathan Lean retweeted
Breaking News: California Governor Gavin Newsom spared the lives of everyone on death row in the state, commuting the sentences of 548 prisoners. nyti.ms/4zu9I2f
Today’s research on Islam in America has me looking at plat maps from Newark in 1916. Noble Drew Ali once operated an “officer out of a home on School Street.
Nathan Lean retweeted
The Donald Trump era in American politics ended Tuesday. This was the most comprehensive repudiation of a U.S. political party since post-Watergate. There have been dark moments when I thought our nation was irretrievably lost. I was wrong. It feels like morning in America again.
Nathan Lean retweeted
In 1860, an enslaved man named Sheppard Peek was listed among the possessions of William Peek, a white man in Crawfordville.
More than a century and a half later, Sheppard’s great-great-granddaughter has been elected governor of Georgia.
ajc.com/politics/2026/11/kei…
Nathan Lean retweeted
Tonight is likely to be a rejection of @MikeRogersForMI. All my tweeting aside, I’ve known Mike & Kristi for 30+ years, I know how much it will hurt to lose. If that happens, I hope they accept this in the spirit in which this is offered: You deserve to be miserable after the appalling bigotry you’ve spread like napalm. Go away.
Nathan Lean retweeted
Ta-Nehisi Coates on Haley Stevens and anti-Arab racism:
vanityfair.com/story/ta-nehi…
This is complete bullshit. The origins of this term date back to the early 1900s, and it has long been used since then to describe very real prejudice towards Muslims. Organizations like @IDICenter put targets on the backs of Muslims by dismissing the violence that targets them and parroting this claptrap by @bulutuzay_. The term "anti-Semitism" has its flaws too — it refers to Semitic speakers, not just Jews — but no one with a brain would ever say it shouldn't be used to describe prejudice targeting that group.
“Islamophobia” is a term propagated to protect Muslims from prejudice, but in reality, it was designed to shield Islam from scrutiny, let Islam infiltrate the West unchallenged, and cripple the West’s ability to defend the victims of Islam.
Read “Islamophobia:” How the West is abandoning the victims of Islam by @bulutuzay_
idicenter.org/article/islamo…
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.
