Nathan Lean Gets Publicly Challenged By Asra Nomani For His Abuse Towards Muslims

Nathan Lean is an American author who has been dining out on the popularity afforded to the meaningless term ‘Islamophobia’ for several years now after releasing his book ‘The Islamophobia Industry’.

Lean essentially caricatures the discussion on Islamism as ‘Muslims Vs. Racists’ at every opportunity. There’s one massively inconvenient obstacle to his narrative however: non-white Muslim reformers and ex-Muslims. They too have noticed that not all is well within the Muslim world and that there are a number of things in Islamic orthodoxy that are deserving of criticism and challenge.

These courageous voices risk everything in defence of liberal principles. Rather than engage with the arguments of reformers, Nathan Lean opts for smear campaigns and derogatory labelling instead – once referring to Maajid Nawaz as a ‘Muslim Validator’ and ‘Lapdog’.

Asra Nomani is a Muslim reformer and staunch liberal. She took it upon herself to publically hold Lean to account for his behaviour, which you can watch below:

Remarkably, Nathan Lean isn’t particularly keen to answer questions about the things he’s said and done. One thing struck me as particularly interesting though. Is Nathan Lean a Muslim?

This has never occurred to me before as I don’t tend to care about peoples’ personal beliefs. However, this question is entirely justifiable given Nathan enjoys the presumption of impartiality from his readers, both professionally and publicly when he writes about Islam. Will Nathan declare his interests?

Stephen Knight is host of The #GSPodcast. You can listen to The Godless Spellchecker Podcast here, and support it by becoming a patron here.