When speaking about the arrival of migrants in Europe, people often ask why newcomers keep travelling north, rather than staying in the country where they arrived. For Rana Ahmad, a Syrian woman who fled Saudi Arabia because of her non-religious beliefs, it was Germany’s eminent roster of physicists, from Albert Einstein to Werner Heisenberg, which inspired her to continue journeying through Europe to study physics there.
Rana began to doubt her religious convictions when reading science and philosophy books at the age of 26. Because it is illegal to own books like The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, Rana downloaded them from the internet onto a memory stick – keeping it with her at all times to avoid being caught.
.... Part of Rana’s motivation behind the Atheist Refugee Fund was her experience in refugee camps. Once other refugees learnt that Rana was an ex-Muslim, she suffered abuse. She still receives death threats from other refugees because of her criticism of Islam and her promotion of women’s rights. [New Statesman] Read more
