Muhammad Syed

Muhammad Syed is a Pakistani-American writer, speaker, and political activist. He created the Ex-Muslims of North America (EXMNA) advocacy group in 2013 which seeks to normalize religious dissent and to help former Muslims leave the religion by linking them to support networks. He is the co-founder, executive director, and currently the president of EXMNA.

Early life Muhammed Syed was born in the United States and grew up in Pakistan. As a child he had a love for the sciences—mostly astronomy—and was a big fan of Star Wars and Star Trek. He came from a well educated background as both his parents had PhDs and describes his upbringing as "relatively liberal" from which his mother was particularly open minded. He further explained his experiences growing up in a 2016 interview with The Humanist: "My family is relatively pro-science. I was a Muslim who understood and accepted evolution." He said his understanding of evolution came mostly from the book Cosmos by Carl Sagan, which did not make him question his faith directly but set him on a path to secularism. He moved back to the United States in 2001, a few months before the September 11 attacks.

Activism Anti-war protests In 2001, after the September 11 attacks and the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, Syed joined anti-war protests. ). Syed saw this as a rare case of self-criticism and self-reflection from within the Muslim community, which he says had a profound impact on his way of thinking.

In 2012, Syed started organizing an Ex-Muslim Community in the Northeast Corridor surrounding the D.C. area. During the spring of 2013 he reached out to other Ex-Muslim Communities with the goal of creating an umbrella organization that would unify the communities. The combined efforts of these communities resulted in the creation of EXMNA. The group tries to normalize dissent by doing seminars, giving speeches, and creating awareness campaigns. They also create and engage in protests and vigils for imprisoned dissidents and murdered atheists.

Muhammad Syed, Sarah Haider and Heina Dadabhoy speaking at the American Atheist Convention 2015. In a 2014 article, The New York Times took note of the EXMNA motto: "No Bigotry and No Apologism" and described the group as welcoming. The BBC supported this evaluation, saying that the group is inclusive and has members from over 40 different ethnic backgrounds.

In a 2014 interview with the Richard Dawkins Foundation, Syed further explained the risk involved, saying that many of their members have been beaten, disowned, and kicked out of their family homes. He also stressed the importance of the group for people who need resources to get help or simply to just talk to someone. Syed said he has members who break down and cry because it's the first time in years where they've felt like they belong. In a 2016 interview with Areo Magazine, the group said that a lot of their members are immigrants, so they have a difficult time fitting in with the broader American culture if they are disowned by their family and community.

In 2015, Syed appeared on The Mythicist Milwaukee Show run by the Mythicist Milwaukee secular organization in February and then gave a speech at American Atheists National Convention in April. The same year he gave a public lecture at the Center for Inquiry entitled "Blasphemy and the importance of dissent." In September 2016, he spoke at the annual conference of the American Humanist Association on the topic of "Examining Honor Culture & Violence in Islam."

Reactions In 2016, the Wegmans Food Markets in Fairfax, Virginia refused to bake a cake for the EXMNA. Muhammad Syed was confused and said "There is nothing about our name or logo that can be considered offensive to any reasonable individual." Attorney Andrew Seidel wrote a letter to Wegmans on June 20 describing their decision as a potential civil rights violation. The food market later reversed course and made the cake for the group.

In May 2017, Muhammad Syed's Facebook group for EXMNA (24,000 members) was shut down due to being targeted by Islamic fundamentalist groups. Other ex-Muslim atheist groups that were simultaneously taken down by the Islamist mass flagging operation (under the slogan "Report anti-Islamic pages" and also targeted the public page of Atheist Republic (more than 1.6 million likes). In an open letter, Syed wrote that the Facebook and other social media platforms were not doing enough to protect vulnerable groups from malicious attacks. He further stated "Arab atheists, Bangladeshi secularists, and numerous other groups have been under attack for years, as religious conservatives in the Muslim world learn to abuse Facebook’s reporting system to their advantage."