Rana Ahmad

Ahmad's father came from Syria to work as a construction manager in Saudi Arabia in the mid-1970s.

Four years later, he married Ahmad's mother in Syria and took her to Riyadh.

Rana Ahmad or Rana Ahmad Hamd (born 1985 ) 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.

Ahmad was born there in 1985 and has an older and a younger brother and an older sister.

Her family was deeply religious, in her words 'an extremist family compared to other families in our society', and that she and her siblings were taught the Quran from the age of 4.

Ahmad went to a state girls' school, where more than a quarter of all education was dedicated to religion.

She was taught that all non-Muslims would go to hell, and that hating Christians and Jews was a religious duty.

She 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.

But at the age of 10, her grandfather took her bike away, saying she was 'too old for that now', which she felt robbed her of her most important freedom.

Amhad did not understand why it should be considered haram if "big girls" like her ride a bike, but not if boys do the same.

The very next day, also from the age of 10, Ahmad was compelled to wear an abaya and a black hijab.

Although Saudi law does not require women to wear headgear that is more restrictive than the hijab, at age 13 Ahmad was compelled by her family and her school to wear an even more face-covering niqab, which only left her eyes uncovered.

Although she didn't understand the religious rules that were subsequently imposed upon her, she accepted and complied.

She had never had any contact with a boy or man that was not related to her until she reached adulthood.

At the age of 19, 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.

Meanwhile, her husband turned abusive and prompted her to seek a divorce and move back in with her parents, which stained her reputation in society.

She rejected three more marriage proposals by Saudi men in subsequent years, arguing she wanted to advance her education first.

Ahmad attended vocational school courses in English and EDP, then worked as a receptionist and office worker in various medical practices and hospitals.

Due to the Saudi male guardianship system, however, she could barely leave the house and if she wanted to travel by car, her male relatives had to drive her; she wasn't allowed to travel alone.

However, the restrictions and obligations of being a married woman made her question her role, her religion and evolved into a desire for freedom.

In search for answers to her questions, she turned to the internet, discovering philosophy (which Ahmad says is banned in Saudi Arabia ) and atheism at the age of 25.

This happened in 2011, when she ran into a tweet from someone using the Twitter handle "Arab Atheist", which she had to Google Translate to understand.

Shocked, Ahmad contacted "Arab Atheist", who recommended her multiple documentaries (for example, on the theory of evolution and the Big Bang) and books from Richard Dawkins, Friedrich Nietzsche, Voltaire and Charles Darwin translated to Arabic.

In 2014, she was forced by her family to participate in the hajj.

She sought and found the help of Atheist Republic as well as other similar organisations online.

"I cried when I discovered all the things I was never taught, what they withheld from me," Ahmad Said in a 2016 interview.

After about a year, she concluded she could no longer believe, because of all the contradictions in the Quran.

It caused her even greater fear and sorrow to realise that atheism and apostasy in Saudi Arabia were punishable by death, and she probably had to leave the country and everything she had behind, in order to survive.

She 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.

For five years, she lived as a closeted atheist in Saudi Arabia, terrified that her family would kill her or the state would execute her if her nonbelief were discovered.

Ahmad's older brother began to suspect she was secretly seeing men, and placed a covert listening device in her room.

Catching her calling with a male friend, he stormed her room and tried to kill her, but their father heard her screams for help and intervened.

After this incident, Ahmad tried to commit suicide by cutting her wrists, but again her father found her in time to take her to the hospital and save her life.

Ahmad got a new job as secretary at a school for mentally disabled children.

Meanwhile, she took on English studies.

When her mother discovered Ahmad's tweets about religious doubts, she was furious and put Ahmad under house arrest for a month without access to her laptop or smartphone.

Her mother forced her to pray and recite the Quran.

Her flight, assisted by Atheist Republic and Faith to Faithless, was partially documented in the Vice News documentary Leaving Islam: Rescuing Ex-Muslims (2017).

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.'

Her 2018 German-language autobiography Frauen dürfen hier nicht träumen ('Women Aren't Allowed to Dream Here' ), also translated into French, and became a Spiegel Top-10-best-seller.