I applaud any Egyptian brave enough to come out as atheist. Me? I couldn't live there, uh uh. I'd become suicidal.

Egyptian media has reflected this deep-seated outrage, addressing atheism as an affliction brought on by a blend of corrupting Western influences and religious ignorance. The two extremes of the latter, according to state media and its cheerleaders, are personified by the militant Islamists of the Islamic State and the Muslim Brotherhood on one hand, and atheists on the other. To fight it, the state has launched a ‘war on atheism’ – an ambitious five-year plan that included the publicizing of nonreligion’s rapacious effects on society, the training of imams to ‘cure’ it, and even a special task force to arrest atheists who are active online.

Yeah that's going to get rid of religious terrorism – by making it taboo to question religion. Why's Egypt fucked up again?

Ahmed Harqan, who had become one of Egypt’s better known atheists online, appear[ed] in a series of unprecedented televised debates. In one such appearance, Harqan recalled his Salafi past, explained the intellectual roots of his own doubts, and claimed that Egyptians aren’t given the space to think critically about religion. Still more insultingly, he argued that the acts of ISIS and Boko Haram aren’t all that different to those of the Prophet and his companions.

Yeah, sounds sensible ...

Not long after one of these shows, an angry mob attacked Harqan, not sparing his pregnant wife. Both escaped with minor injuries, but the unborn child was lost. Upon reporting the incident at the police station, the officers found them worthy of further harassment, after which they were briefly imprisoned. That was their cue to go into hiding, where they remain today. D'oh!

They even police what you eat: Sherin, questioned about her vegetarianism on the grounds that God made the killing of animals halal, replies that she simply doesn’t feel like eating meat. Rather than articulate her personal concern for animal well-being, she does what atheists are forced to do daily – she self-censors.

It's a very interesting, insightful article. We can only hope the unbelief grows and grows ...

A century ago, Egyptian atheist ‘Abd al Rahman Badawi described the same feeling: ‘‘[Atheism] is, actually, the natural result of the life of those who did their best to be believers. There remained nothing further to be done.”