If you’ve hung out with the atheist communities on YouTube or Instagram (and if you haven’t, congratulations!) you’ve probably encountered Lily Jay. She’s a chirpy blonde Australian woman, and convert to Islam, who makes short videos in which she tries to poke holes in atheist ideas. Her content is incredibly stupid, but she does have 3 million followers. Here’s an example of the bad, but fortunately brief, arguments she makes.
You want more evidence of stupidity? Here’s another example. There’s so much more on her YouTube channel.
She also rejects evolution for the dumbest reasons.
We evolutionists say we all evolved from one-celled organisms, but we don’t have any 2-cell or 3-cell organisms. Checkmate, atheists!
She’s all over social media. She doesn’t just pester atheists with her nonsense, but there are also lots of videos that start Hey Christians,
Hey Hindus,
Hey Buddhists,
Hey feminists,
Hey vegetarians,
etc., etc., etc. all with the same sort of stupid gotcha claims. She is incredibly obnoxious. I’ve long been in the habit of instantly scrolling away when that face and the word Hey…
appears.
She not only has a huge personal following, but she claims to have built a charitable organization, the Lily Jay Foundation, which has been opening up orphanages and mosques all over Africa. Or has it?
The foundation she recently established, the Lily Jay Foundation, also has a massive following.
Its logo often adorns banners that appear in her videos, usually fixed behind her.
In one of those videos, posted in February, viewers are introduced to “our newest children in Africa”.
They wear white T-shirts, adorned with the same Lily Jay Foundation logo and the Ugandan flag.
“We washed them, gave them new clothes, everything a child needs to grow up in a positive environment,” the voiceover says, over images of happy children.
Except…these propaganda videos all seem to be made with AI.
The woman who appears at the start of the video, enthusiastically announcing the establishment of the orphanage, is not the real Lily Jay.
This blonde woman is a fabrication, made with artificial intelligence. So too are the children with lollipops, and the foundation’s banner behind her.
Further, no one seems to be able to find these charitable constructs via independent sources.
The Ugandan Registration Services Bureau initially confirmed to ABC NEWS Verify that there was no orphanage registered under the Lily Jay Foundation name, or “Ada Nur”, the name Lily Jay has given to the orphanage on her website.
It turns out the foundation isn’t even registered as a charity — it’s a logistics firm
.
The Lily Jay Foundation registered its first ABN in 2025, but at the bottom of the foundation’s website is the admission that it is not an actual charity.
“Lily Jay Foundation is a next-generation social enterprise and high-speed humanitarian logistics firm executing rapid aid deployment in global crisis zones,” it read.
“To maintain absolute speed and independence, we operate as a private commercial structure funded by voluntary project sponsorships, which fuel our high-speed supply chain and are currently not tax-deductible.”
If you’re curious about what anyone would have to gain by setting up a fake charity, or why they would do it, the answer is simple.
Lily Jay — real name Lily Jay Hinson — does not appear to currently reside in Australia and details about the 31-year-old’s life are difficult to pinpoint.
Her social media account shows a life of jet-setting luxury, business class travel and expensive-looking jewellery.
Clues online indicate she is originally from the Sunshine Coast and had attempted a career in music and dance before pivoting to become an Islam influencer.
I will be curious to see if her popularity starts to drop, or if YouTube or Instagram kill her lying, phony channels. But I’m not holding my breath — she says what believers want to hear, so it’ll probably continue.
Oops. Her instagram account has already been deleted.
Was in the news: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-05/lily-jay-foundation-posts-ai-generated-misleading-videos/106866422
Yes, that’s the link in my post.
I don’t really care one way or another, but does “she” really have a huge following or is that also fake?
Nice catch, PZ. I have only encountered her a couple of times, but her formula was instantly annoying to me.
Right…atheists are stoopid for (allegedly) believing “the universe came from nothing” — but it’s totally rational for theists to believe their God created the universe from nothing…without saying one word about where their God came from.
[oops sorry PZ, I missed your link. I did see it at the time]
I really don’t like the practice of mocking the idiots for what they look like, rather than (as PZ does, lest anyone take this the wrong way) the stupid things they say. …but seriously? What is with that weird fake spray tan in the image from the second linked video? She’s approaching King Cheeto levels.
Where do babies come from?
Volvox, Chlamydomonas, and the Evolution of Multicellularity
we don’t know where the universe came from. physics can’t say yet.
also, now i am curious to go watch some of the videos.
i know. glutton for punishment.
i also like watching flat earth videos. the stoopid burns.
#7. “ I really don’t like the practice of mocking the idiots for what they look like, rather than (as PZ does, lest anyone take this the wrong way) the stupid things they say…”
As much as I like Steven Colbert I dislike the way Has made fun people’s looks,e’g. he mocks Eric Trump’s teeth by imitating the way he looks. I think it is an awful thing to do.
… and convert to Islam…
Who leaves her hair all hanging out where God and everybody can see it?
I can’t recall meeting a female Muslim convert who does that.
Of however many such you’ve met, how many do you recall?
(I myself have never met one)
“Hey atheists — I have a question.”
Ask Google, they don’t mind stupid questions.
John Morales @ # 13: Of however many such you’ve met, how many do you recall?
Can’t give you a number, but during my work on anti-war(-on-Muslim-nations) campaigns I’ve interacted with multiple local Muslim groups, and so far all of ’em have had publicly active women members and all of those have had headscarves (maybe not full hijabs – not sure I could tell the diff). Will probably encounter more before long…
Lily Jay has a criminal past as well as a dodgy present. She also hasn’t fooled many Muslims who exposed her well before the Australian broadcaster did. Thats the problem. When you claim you are providing aid to Palestinians in Gaza and Palestinian-Australians check with their relatives and aid workers over there, nobody knows her except for one dodgy account where she tried buying water and wanted to stiff the supplier. https://thepattayanews.com/2023/06/03/australian-couple-arrested-in-phuket-for-allegedly-stealing-2-5-million-baht-from-chinese-man-in-bangkok/
sinead o’connor converted, did she cover her head?
For those old enough to remember it, this lily jay seems to be the maniacal AI reincarnation of max headroom. I find all the short videos, as PZ said, just a massive dose of cloned, formulaic ‘gotcha’ gimmicks of limited logic and credibility. The internet has so much that is substantive, interesting, entertaining and educational, it’s sad so many sheople get caught up as followers (and supporters) of this kind of plastic inanity along with the mind damaging swamp that is social media.
Pierce @15, you specified female Muslim converts.
Might it be that you only know they are Muslim women because they at least use headscarves?
Availability heuristic. Cognitive filter.
(I’m just saying, local Muslim groups are by definition Muslim activists)
@ 12, 13, 15, 17, & 19
Rama Duwaji, the Muslim wife of Zohran Mamdani, many photos show her without a head covering. She was born in the US, make of that what you will.
If a human has blond hair, their eyebrows are generally also blond.
Like me.
I don’t know if Lily Jay is fake -and therein lies ther problem.
AI is getting so convincing and a lot of people an be pretty shallow and unthinking and just say their religions ideologically scripts like that. There was a really good doco series on Aussie ABC earleir this year (or was it last year now?) on just how very convincing they can be and how we cannot really tell what is and isn’t AI anymore.
Lily Jay reminds me of The Faux news “bimbos” – horrible word but does kinda sum them up that are blonde, pretty formulaic and so very interchangeable like a trope even tho’ they are real women too.
Could Lily Jay be a shallow, dogmatic, real person with annoying mannerisms and style? Yeah. Could she be AI? Yeah. That we need to look into it indepth to tell shows what a strange new world we live in that has such people (?) – or are they – in it.
John Morales @ # 19: Might it be that you only know they are Muslim women because they at least use headscarves?
Who just happened to show up at a series of meetings of Muslim students opposing the Bush wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, join in the work to organize and carry out protests, use words like “inshallah” and “bismallah”, and identify specific Arabic men as their husbands? Yeah, I must be just stereotyping women for their headwear.
C’mon, you chastise people often enough for inadequate reading comprehension, you need to do better than that.
… local Muslim groups are by definition Muslim activists…
Not by my definition of activist – those who meet to pray and read suras and suchlike count as Muslims, in groups, but that activity ain’t activism in any secular sense.
Alan G. Humphrey @ # 20: Rama Duwaji, the Muslim wife of Zohran Mamdani…
Pls note I specified Muslim converts. Sfaict, the new kids feel more of a demand to conform (both socially and internalized) than those raised in the faith.
@ ^ “There was a really good doco series on Aussie ABC earlier this year (or was it last year now?) on just how very convincing they can be and how we cannot really tell what is and isn’t AI anymore.”
This was The Matter of Facts hosted by Hamish Macdonald and yeah, this year. Excellent series which is allon IView here :
https://iview.abc.net.au/show/matter-of-facts
With the trailer for it here – The Matter of Facts | First Look | ABC iview (1 min 16 secs) and a segment of it here – Get better at avoiding clickbait | The Matter of Facts lasting 9 mins. Would highly recommend it.
.
.
Now if I can just find a satirical video from many years ago where one of the Fox News reader bimbos turned out to literally be a robot that glitched and then failed and “died” on the show.. The dying android was then comforted by a woman (Sam Bee?) that lied to it about all their silly non-story results eg telling it that you can now say merry Xmas again..
Remember seeing it (on youtube?) Think so..) but cannot find it online now. Sam Bee’s show maybe? But can’t find it there. Another female comedian? Have tried searching many times with different words but so far it has’nt turned up..
Anyone else with better Google-fu recall that one or want to help here please?
Wow.
Not by my definition of activist – those who meet to pray and read suras and suchlike count as Muslims, in groups, but that activity ain’t activism in any secular sense.
Ahem. “Who just happened to show up at a series of meetings of Muslim students opposing the Bush wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, join in the work to organize and carry out protests, use words like “inshallah” and “bismallah”, and identify specific Arabic men as their husbands?”
That sure sounds like Muslim activism to me.
Yup. Precisely.
Were I to show you articles about Muslim women who do not generally wear headgear, would you be surprised?
After all, you “can’t recall meeting a female Muslim convert who does that.”, that being having uncovered hair.
You quite sure those Muslim women groupers (not activists!) were all converts?
I think that was plenty enough.
I did, at #13, but then you evasively talked about (I quote verbatim) about “Muslim students opposing the Bush wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, join in the work to organize and carry out protests, use words like “inshallah” and “bismallah”, and identify specific Arabic men as their husbands”.
(How did you distinguish those who were converts?)
—
chigau, most of those ‘eyebrows’ are painted-on.
Care to sing with me Pierce? I’m sure you know the words by now.
@17. Bébé Mélange : “Sinead o’connor converted, did she cover her head?”
FWIW sometimes yes :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin%C3%A9ad_O%27Connor#Religion
Plus Sinead O’Connor on Islam | The Late Late Show (3 misn 48 secs long)
Other times seems not Sinead O’Connor – Nothing Compares 2 U (Live)
Her choice, her business and does it matter that much?
@ 26 Morales
If you must be the most tedious troll in the history of the blog, can you at least fucking learn to blockquote? How are we supposed to know which of you first few paragraphs are quotes and which are your replies without having to go back and check?
If you’re going to be unutterably tedious, and least don’t be so fucking lazy at the same time!
I strongly dislike the theology of Islam and its bogus prophet, but I always make a difference between the faith itself and the individuals who practice Islam/ are born into the faith, just as I make a distinction between Xians – nominal or otherwise – and the conglomerate of conflicting ideas that makes up the faith.
I had a period when I tracked all the things that were wrong with Islam, but I got bored. Too many low-hanging fruits.
I also kept an eye on muslim outreach on social media, but it also got boring fast. Those who actively propagate for the faith are a bit too like MAGA followers.
.
It is actually more fun to follow the dumpster fire that is flat-Earth belief. They are spectacularly wrong in an entertaining way. Like when Mike Marshall at God Awful Movies described a prominent Brit flat Earther as “the one who washes with and drinks his own piss” (not a joke- he really does). Aaargh.
Or the “bretharians”.
Why would anyone bother with (pretending to) convert without also using the garb? There can’t be that many people who get converted on theological grounds compated to those who convert due to shame culture.
erik: Maybe she agreed with most of the basic doctrine, without accepting the dress code? That is possible, whether or not other Muslims accept her as sincere.
John Morales @ # 26 – get help.