Happy Ex-Muslim Awareness Month!

We wanted to dedicate a special edition of Dissent Dispatch to update readers on what we’ve been up to this year. Just in time for Ex-Muslim Awareness Month, EXMNA is proud to have published its 2025 Annual Report. It’s been a productive year full of accomplishments that we’re excited to share with you!

The public centerpiece of this year’s advocacy was the whyNOTislam campaign. We launched billboards in New Jersey, a state where the Muslim population has doubled in the last decade, directing questioning Muslims to our new site: whyNOTislam.net. This website deconstructs claims of the Qur’an’s record on human rights and science from a nuanced and objective perspective. The billboards were seen by an estimated four million people, and through our social media advocacy, whyNOTislam.net drew visitors from 85 countries.

Behind the scenes, we engaged with over two dozen US policymakers as well as advocacy organizations, and media outlets. Many had never met with an ex-Muslim organization before and expressed appreciation for our work on supporting the rights and dignities of ex-Muslims. We distributed educational materials about the problems with the term “Islamophobia” and how freedom of expression in democracies is threatened by concessions to religious interests.

Notably, we drew the attention of Representative Jared Huffman’s office to the plight of activist Ibtissame Betty Lachgar, who was jailed this year in Morocco for wearing a T-shirt that read “Allah is lesbian.” After this meeting, Representative Huffman used his platform to call for Betty’s release. In addition to this, our Director of Operations, Aysha Khan, wrote over two dozen letters in support of asylum claims from ex-Muslims abroad, an effort which has so far been successful in granting asylum to ex-Muslims in the US, Canada, and Europe.

Throughout 2025, we also continued to make ourselves known through efforts of public outreach and education. Our annual Draw Muhammad Day contest was a great success, and our social media metrics rose considerably this year. Representatives from EXMNA made themselves known at events like California Freethought Day and in collaborations with other ex-Muslim influencers. We expanded our Persecution Tracker with more cases and continued our renovation of WikiIslam, publishing new articles, overhauling many others, and translating some into French and Arabic. These efforts have all been complemented by a redesign of our website that has made navigation of our resources smoother and easier, ensuring we can better deliver our message of freethought and dissent.

This is just a glimpse of what we’ve accomplished this year, and a deeper dive can be found in the full text of 2025 Annual Report on our website. We’re looking forward to continuing our work to normalize dissent and keep the flame of inquiry burning, and with your help, we can do so through 2026 and well beyond.

Lastly: we want to extend a special thank you to all of you who have read and supported this newsletter through its first full year. We’ve enjoyed keeping you up to date with our efforts and perspectives on what’s going on in the world, and we’ve enjoyed hearing your feedback as well. You’ll continue to hear from us each week as we continue the struggle for a world where all are free to follow their conscience. If you would like to take your support one step further, we invite you to forward this newsletter to anyone who would find our work valuable. You can also donate here at any time!

From the Community

A global map of Ex-Muslim stories launched for Ex-Muslim Awareness Month

Check out exmuslim.me, the first-ever global map of Ex-Muslim stories shared anonymously and launched exclusively for Ex-Muslim Awareness Month. Created by a small team of Ex-Muslims, including Haram Doodles, the website gives former Muslims a safe, simple, and powerful way to publicly share their journey out of Islam.

After leaving Islam, former Muslims continue to seek belonging, freedom, and a space where their voices can be heard without fear of repercussions. Within the first 36 hours alone, exmuslim.me received 178 stories from 96 cities and 40 countries, including places where apostasy and blasphemy are criminalized by Islamist governments.

In a world where religions are often valued more than the people harmed by them, these Ex-Muslim stories reveal undeniable global patterns of oppression, firsthand accounts of religious harm, and real-time insights into a community that has been forced into silence for far too long.

If you found this newsletter valuable, please consider sharing it with a friend—or supporting our work with a donation.

Until next week,

The Team at Ex-Muslims of North America

P.S. We’d love to hear from you! Share your feedback at [email protected].

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