Faisal Saeed Al Mutar

Faisal Saeed Al Mutar
Faisal Saeed Al Mutar at the University of Missouri in March 2014
Native name فيصل سعيد المطر
Born 1991[1]
Iraq
Nationality Iraqi
Occupation Human-rights activist, satirist and writer
Notable work Global Secular Humanist Movement

Faisal Saeed Al Mutar (Arabic: فيصل سعيد المطر‎; born 1991) is an Iraqi-born satirist, human-rights activist and writer who was admitted to the United States as a refugee in 2013. He is founder of the Global Secular Humanist Movement (GSHM) and Ideas Beyond Borders and formerly worked for Movements.org to assist dissidents in closed societies worldwide.[2]

Biography

Faisal Saeed Al Mutar was born in Hillah, Iraq, in 1991.[3] He later moved to Baghdad. Al Mutar grew up in a religiously moderate Muslim family in Iraq, though he remained nonreligious throughout his upbringing.[4]

Al Mutar's writings and secular western lifestyle made him a target for threats and attacks by al-Qaeda. He survived three attempted kidnappings.[5] His brother and cousin were also killed by al-Qaeda in sectarian violence there.[6] Al Mutar visited Lebanon and then Malaysia where he founded the Global Secular Humanist Movement in September 2010 "with the mission of addressing the absence of recognition and legal protections for secular humanists." As a result of his activism, Al Mutar received death threats from religious militias such as the Mahdi Army and elements tied to al-Qaeda.[6][7][8][9][10]

Due to his conflicts with Islamists over his secular humanist identity and the deaths of his brother and cousin in sectarian violence, Al Mutar fled Iraq and received asylum in the U.S. in 2013. After first living for a number of months in Houston, Al Mutar moved to Washington, D.C., where he lives and continues to operate GSHM with the broader aim of using "reason, evidence and scientific methods of inquiry—rather than faith and mysticism—in seeking solutions to human problems."[10] He also served as a community manager for Movements.org,[11] a platform which "allows activists from closed societies to connect directly with people around the world with skills to help them."[12]

In 2017 Al Mutar founded Ideas Beyond Borders, a nonprofit that works to: "promote the free exchange of ideas and to defend human rights ... to counter extremist narratives and authoritarian institutions."[13]

Personal views

Al Mutar describes being an atheist in Iraq "like being the only sober person in a car filled with drunk people, and you're not allowed to drive."[14]

He criticizes those like Noam Chomsky who attribute unrest in the Middle East solely to United States foreign policy.

Al Mutar attributes the rise of al-Qaeda, ISIS and the Taliban to Islamism which he says will make terrorism difficult to eradicate by U.S. military force alone. He cites the easy availability of funding as a compounding factor. Al Mutar believes that the Middle East is responsible for enforcing peace in their region.[15] He says the West's inflated sense of moral responsibility, which calls “the racism of lower expectation,” erodes the Middle East's imperative to address its own issues, such as the Syrian refugee crisis.[16]

Al Mutar is a critic of the term "Islamophobia." He says use of the term has been broadened by some on the left to include legitimate criticism of Islam. He differentiates between criticizing ideas and criticizing people.[17] Al Mutar criticizes what he sees as an "unholy alliance" of the regressive left and the Muslim right against the secular or liberal Muslims, which he says applies different moral standards to Muslims.

Al Mutar criticized President Donald Trump's executive order suspending admission of immigrants for putting refugees "in harm's way."[18]

Al Mutar is a columnist for Free Inquiry.[19] From February 2017 to Januari 2018, he was co-host of the Secular Jihadists From The Middle East podcast together with fellow ex-Muslim atheists Ali A. Rizvi, Yasmine Mohammad and Armin Navabi. In January 2018, the show was renamed Secular Jihadists for a Muslim Enlightenment, with only Rizvi and Navabi as co-hosts.[20]

Awards

In 2016 Al Mutar received the gold President's Volunteer Service Award from President Barack Obama for his volunteer service in the United States and around the world.[21]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Faisal Saeed Al-Mutar". Retrieved 11 May 2016.
  2. ↑ Borenstein, David (October 2, 2015). "Crowdsourcing for Human Rights". The New York Times.
  3. ↑ al Mutar, Faisal Saeed (2012). "Faisal Saeed al Mutar - Big Think". Big Think. Retrieved 11 January 2016.
  4. ↑ Naja Dandanell; Louise Grønkjær (3 August 2017). "Hvis vi ikke ændrer uddannelsessystemet, får vi en generation af ekstremister". Skoleliv (in Danish). Retrieved 9 August 2017.
  5. ↑ Stockman, JD (25 December 2013). "Faisal Al Mutar: The Rationalist from an Irrational World Pt. 1". Eggvan. Retrieved 11 January 2016. FAM: Well … (takes in a deep breath) … I think probably because they had mistaken him for me, because I am the one that actually gets the death threats.
  6. 1 2 Chitwood, Ken (3 December 2015). "Iraqi refugee works to make life safer for secular humanists". Religion News Service. The Washington Post. Retrieved 11 January 2016. Reared in a moderate Muslim family that encouraged him to think for himself and make up his own mind, Al-Mutar said he became an atheist at an early age.
  7. ↑ "Coming Out Conversations – EP. 8". Secular Safe House. Retrieved 12 January 2016. He became an activist at the age of 15 when he began organizing the Iraqi Humanist Youth completely unbeknownst to his family at the time. After the tragic murder of his brother, cousin and best friend by Al-Qaeda, he escaped Iraq, first to Lebanon and then Malaysia.
  8. ↑ McAfee, David G. (13 May 2013). "From Iraq To Texas: A Humanist Activist Comes To America". Retrieved 11 January 2016. Faisal founded the Global Secular Humanist Movement in September 2010. GSHM, which encourages humanist values, critical thinking and scientific inquiry over faith, mysticism and dogma, has more than 185,000 “likes” on Facebook.
  9. ↑ Rizvi, Ali A. (24 January 2015). "A Conversation Between Two Atheists From Muslim Backgrounds (Part 1)". Huffington Post. Retrieved 11 January 2016. I used to email Hitchens about how the Iraqi and Arab media covers the war and about Iraqi people's general opinions about the war and post-Saddam Iraq, etc. Hitchens had strong relations with the Kurds, and the Kurdish prime minister was one of his best friends, as well as Ahmad Chalabi, so I was simply a fan who thought that he was the writer who most closely understood the situation in Iraq and had a solution for it.
  10. 1 2 "Iraqi refugee works to make life safer for secular humanists". The Washington Post. Religion News Service. December 3, 2013.
  11. ↑ "Faisal Al Mutar". The Huffington Post.
  12. ↑ Al Mutar, Faisal (September 11, 2014). "Crowdsourcing Human Rights". The Huffington Post.
  13. ↑ Al Mutar, Faisal Saeed. "Faisal Saeed Al Mutar on Facebook". Facebook. Retrieved 8 August 2017.
  14. ↑ Seth Andrews (23 July 2014). "Faisal Saeed Al Mutar". The Thinking Atheist. Retrieved 4 May 2018.
  15. ↑ Breznick, Casey (18 November 2015). "Faisal al Mutar Lectures on the Future of Iraq and ISIS". The Cornell Review. Retrieved 11 January 2016. When he turned towards ways to defeat ISIS, al Mutar said most commentators and political analysts do not fully understand the relationship between terrorist groups and their ideology, which in this case of ISIS and other groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban is Islamism, the political expression of Islam.
  16. ↑ Nguyen-Phuong, Mai (11 September 2015). "Refugee crisis tests Islam's fundamental tenet of Ummah". The Islamic Monthly. Retrieved 13 January 2016. The media and public are focusing on Europe in calling on it to open its doors to refugees and European leaders are tackling the question, but no such calls are being made of the Gulf’s responsibility, something activist Faisal Saeed Al Mutar calls “the racism of lower expectation.” Ignoring the responsibility of the Gulf means that we expect Europeans to be naturally kinder and more humane than people from the Gulf.
  17. ↑ Zepps, Josh (17 December 2015). "Criticizing Islamism Without Offending Muslims". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 13 January 2016. I think that we have been sold this theme of Islamaphobia that been pretty much been trying to silence genuine criticism of the faith.
  18. ↑ CNN, Catherine E. Shoichet. "For these people, Trump's plans are personal". CNN. Retrieved 2017-01-28.
  19. ↑ Scott, Amanda (16 July 2015). "Report from the 2015 Secular Student Alliance Conference". Retrieved 11 January 2016.
  20. ↑ "Secular Jihadists for a Muslim Enlightenment". Retrieved 1 May 2018.
  21. ↑ al Mutar, Faisal Saeed (16 August 2016). "Faisal on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved 18 August 2016. Thank you America and thank you @WhiteHouse for giving me President's Volunteer Service Award (Gold Medal).
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