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The Progress Network is based at the organization New America.

Faisal Saeed Al
Mutar

Founder, counter-extremism advocate

Faisal writes about: Culture, Foreign Affairs, Religion

Raised in Baghdad, Faisal Saeed Al Mutar has firsthand experience with authoritarian regimes. An outspoken writer and activist, he survived the Iraq Civil War, the murder of his brother, and several kidnapping attempts before becoming a refugee in the United States in 2013. ​

Al Mutar has founded several initiatives, including the popular facebook page Global Secular Humanist Movement in 2010 now named Global Conversations, which curates discussion on controversial topics regarding human rights, counter extremism and international affairs. In 2017, he founded the nonprofit Ideas Beyond Borders, which aims to prevent extremism before it takes root by providing the Arabic world with access to translations of works of science, women’s rights and enlightenment literature often suppressed by authoritarian regimes and dictatorships.

As of 2019, Ideas Beyond Borders have more than 120 translators and have translated more than 4000 articles and 12 books, all now available at its digital library at BaytAlHikma2.org 

A practitioner of counter-extremism on an international scale, Al Mutar has travelled to conferences and spoken on campuses across the globe on his experiences working on utilizing education and technology to combat extremism.

The Middle East is the opposite of Las Vegas. What happens in the Middle East doesn’t stay there.

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