Sorry this is late this month: January has been a bear.

Here’s why. I got lots of help with this book, and working on it felt very much like a collaboration, a community effort. (To some extent that’s true with any book, but it was even more true with this one.) Because coming out is really different for different atheists, it was hugely important to get detailed feedback on the book, so my personal perspective wasn’t completely skewing my depiction of other people’s experiences. So I asked lots of friends and colleagues to give me detailed feedback on the book: either on the book as a whole, or on particular chapters about atheists with very different experiences from mine (such as the chapters on parents, students, clergy, people in the U.S. military, and people in theocracies). Many people were very generous with their time helping out: they put a whole lot of time and work and thought into a project that wasn’t theirs, because they thought it would benefit the community. And, of course, I had the help of the hundreds of people who wrote in with their coming-out story, or who told their coming-out story in one of the books or websites I cited, or who just told me your coming-out story in person.

The Ex-Muslims of North America are a group of people dedicated to supporting and helping ex-Muslims. The primary reason for our group’s existence is to build a community and provide a sense of solidarity for ‘ex-Muslims’ -– people who used to follow Islam or identify as Muslim, and who no longer do so. As such, this group is only for ex-Muslims, primarily those located in or from North America. They are largely composed of smaller regional groups, who have a great degree of structural autonomy. The regional groups are united organizationally as the Ex-Muslims of North America (EXMNA).

There are Ex-Muslims in all disciplines and geographies of the world. Due to the risk inherent in declaring apostasy, the majority has kept silent and are isolated. Ex-Muslims of North America aims to change that.

The Ex-Muslims of North America are a 501(c) nonprofit, and donations to them are tax-deductible. If you want to support them too, here’s their donation page!