1. Rana Ahmad or Rana Ahmad Hamd was born on 1985 and is the pseudonym of a Syrian women's rights activist and ex-Muslim born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, who fled to Germany in 2015, where she currently resides.
33 Facts About Rana Ahmad
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Rana Ahmad's flight, assisted by Atheist Republic and Faith to Faithless, was partially documented in the Vice News documentary Leaving Islam: Rescuing Ex-Muslims.
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In 2017, Ahmad founded the Cologne-based Atheist Refugee Relief with the goal of providing 'practical assistance to refugees without religion and to improve their living conditions through political work.
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Rana Ahmad's father came from Syria to work as a construction manager in Saudi Arabia in the mid-1970s.
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Rana Ahmad was born there in 1985 and has an older and a younger brother and an older sister.
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Rana Ahmad went to a state girls' school, where more than a quarter of all education was dedicated to religion.
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Rana Ahmad was taught that all non-Muslims would go to hell, and that hating Christians and Jews was a religious duty.
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Rana Ahmad was allowed to cycle around on her bike, for example to buy groceries, when the family was on holiday at her father's parents in Syria.
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The very next day, from the age of 10, Rana Ahmad was compelled to wear an abaya and a black hijab.
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Rana Ahmad had never had any contact with a boy or man that was not related to her until she reached adulthood.
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At the age of 19, Rana Ahmad was to be married off, and an engagement party took place in Syria, but because her would-be husband refused to move to Saudi Arabia and she refused to move to Syria, the plans did not materialise.
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Rana Ahmad rejected three more marriage proposals by Saudi men in subsequent years, arguing she wanted to advance her education first.
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Rana Ahmad attended vocational school courses in English and EDP, then worked as a receptionist and office worker in various medical practices and hospitals.
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Shocked, Rana Ahmad contacted "Arab Atheist", who recommended her multiple documentaries and books from Richard Dawkins, Friedrich Nietzsche, Voltaire and Charles Darwin translated to Arabic.
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Rana Ahmad hid her changing views from her family and continued praying five times a day, while she searched for help online from various groups such as Faith to Faithless, Ex-Muslims of North America and Atheist Republic.
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Rana Ahmad got a new job as secretary at a school for mentally disabled children.
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Rana Ahmad's mother forced her to pray and recite the Quran.
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Rana Ahmad sought and found the help of Atheist Republic as well as other similar organisations online.
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Rana Ahmad was extremely frightened because she knew she would be killed if the people around her saw the paper and discovered her nonbelief, but she wanted to tell the internet that she existed as an atheist in Mecca and, like many nonbelievers in Saudi Arabia, was not here by her own choice.
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Rana Ahmad requested Atheist Republic to upload the photo to Facebook after she left Mecca, and they did so on 3 August 2014; a few days later she was overwhelmed to find it had gone viral.
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Rana Ahmad made plans to escape the country, aided by Faith to Faithless.
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At first, Rana Ahmad sought to flee to the Netherlands, but the embassy refused to grant her a visa.
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Rana Ahmad took off her hijab and abaya upon arrival for the first time as an adult in public, and henceforth adopted her pseudonym 'Rana Ahmad ' to frustrate attempts by her family to track her down.
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Rana Ahmad cut her hair short, dyed it blonde and put on colourful contact lenses as a disguise.
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Rana Ahmad cancelled plans to continue to Sweden because she was out of money, tired of travelling and had heard Germany's education system was good.
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Rana Ahmad spent much of her first year reading books, intending to study nuclear physics or nuclear engineering.
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Rana Ahmad felt threatened by Muslim refugees in the camp many of whom thought of apostasy as a deadly crime.
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Since late 2018, Rana Ahmad has been studying physics in Cologne.
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In subsequent years, Rana Ahmad has given many interviews to several media, primarily German and French ones, about her experiences and her political and religious opinions, especially with regards to the politics of Saudi Arabia and its Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after dissident Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated in October 2018.
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Rana Ahmad commented that Saudi authorities have failed to stimulate the emancipation of women that many activists have campaigned for, often imprisoning them, and thereby sending women the message they have no future in Saudi Arabia and pushing them to flee the country.
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On 5 March 2016, three months after arriving in Germany, Rana Ahmad held her first public speech in Cologne at a meeting organised by the Central Council of Ex-Muslims.
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Rana Ahmad gave her first major interview to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in June 2016.
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On 15 August 2016, Rana Ahmad was interviewed on television for the first time by journalist Jaafar Abdul Karim from Deutsche Welle in Arabic, excerpts of which were translated to English and other languages.