fotoduets – Adobe Stock Over the past few years, Secular Rescue has seen an increasing number of urgent requests for aid and other forms of assistance from threatened atheists—typically ex-Muslims—residing in the northern regions of Africa. This part of the world has seen a resurgence in extremism and anti-atheist violence since the so-called Arab Spring, which began in Tunisia in late 2010 and then spread into nearby Morocco and Libya and then to Oman, Yemen, and Egypt in early 2011. Since then, instability and corruption have been the norm, with militias in control of many areas. Scant progress in civil and economic reform has been compounded by ethnic, sectarian, and tribal violence. For some of the more publicly outspoken nonbelievers, and especially ex-Muslims, in these failed states, the spring of hope has become a summer wasteland of fear and oppression. Power vacuums have ushered in religious authoritarians who rule under the banner of faith and righteousness, leaving minorities and freethinkers exposed to the worst kinds of discrimination. One of these brave secularists, who goes by the name …