Faisal Saeed Al Mutar

Faisal Saeed Al Mutar
Faisal Saeed Al Mutar at the University of Missouri in March 2014
Native name	فيصل سعيد المطر
Born	1991 Iraq
Nationality	Iraqi
Occupation	Human-rights activist, satirist and writer
Notable work	Global Secular Humanist Movement

Faisal Saeed Al Mutar (Arabic: فيصل سعيد المطر‎‎; born 1991) is an Iraqi-born satirist, human-rights activist and writer who was admitted to the United States as a refugee in 2013. He is founder of the Global Secular Humanist Movement (GSHM) and Ideas Beyond Borders and formerly worked for Movements.org to assist dissidents in closed societies worldwide.

Faisal Saeed Al Mutar was born in Hillah, Iraq, in 1991. He later moved to Baghdad. Al Mutar grew up in a religiously moderate Muslim family in Iraq, though he remained nonreligious throughout his upbringing. With his family encouraging him to think for himself and make up his own mind, he became an atheist at an early age. In school, "we constantly heard of Jewish conspiracies and learned that Arabs were sort of leaders of the Muslim world," according to Al Mutar.

Around this time Al Mutar's writings and secular western lifestyle made him a target for threats and attacks by al-Qaeda. He survived three attempted kidnappings. His brother and cousin were also killed by al-Qaeda in sectarian violence there. Al Mutar visited Lebanon and then Malaysia where he founded the Global Secular Humanist Movement in September 2010 "with the mission of addressing the absence of recognition and legal protections for secular humanists." As a result of his activism, Al Mutar received death threats from religious militias such as the Mahdi Army and elements tied to al-Qaeda.

Due to his conflicts with Islamists over his secular humanist identity and the deaths of his brother and cousin in sectarian violence, Al Mutar fled Iraq and received asylum in the U.S. in 2013. After first living for a number of months in Houston, Al Mutar moved to Washington, D.C., where he lives and continues to operate GSHM with the broader aim of using "reason, evidence and scientific methods of inquiry—rather than faith and mysticism—in seeking solutions to human problems." He also served as a community manager for Movements.org, a platform which "allows activists from closed societies to connect directly with people around the world with skills to help them."

In 2017 Al Mutar founded Ideas Beyond Borders, a nonprofit that works to: "promote the free exchange of ideas and to defend human rights ... to counter extremist narratives and authoritarian institutions."