Armin Navabi (Persian: آرمین نوابی; born 25 December 1983) is an Iranian-Canadian ex-Muslim atheist, author and podcaster, currently living in Vancouver, Canada.

In 2012, he founded the online freethought community Atheist Republic, a Canada-based non-profit organisation[1] which now has hundreds of branches called "consulates" in several countries around the world such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines,[2] enabling non-believers to interact in societies where irreligion, apostasy, and blasphemy are often criminalised and repressed.

[3] As an author, he debuted with the book Why There Is No God (2014), and in 2017 he became a co-host of the Secular Jihadists from the Middle East podcast with Ali A. Rizvi, Yasmine Mohammad and Faisal Saeed Al Mutar.

[6][8] Recovering from his attempt and feeling bad about distressing his family, Navabi became an even more fervent Muslim, never missing a prayer, never even looking at girls lest he become tempted, and diligently studying Islam.

[7][6] However, the more he learned the more doubts he developed as the religion appeared to make no sense to him, demanding an incredibly high toll on Muslims' everyday life and punishing all non-Muslims with eternal torture.

[6] A milestone event was reading a book on the history of religion in college: "I saw how convenient it was to change the concept of God and what he wanted based on the politics of the time.

[6][4] He didn't want to stay in Tehran, and managed to obtain a student visa for the University of British Columbia to study finance.

In February 2019, Cherwell, a student newspaper at the University of Oxford, refused to publish an interview of Navabi in its online edition, on the grounds that it "may be considered offensive" to Muslims.

The university stated that it was unwilling to host the event after the Christchurch mosque shootings, but "would absolutely have the speaker come to our campus at another time".

"[15] In 2014, Syrian ex-Muslim Rana Ahmad was having trouble in her family, she sought and found the help of Atheist Republic as well as other similar organisations online.

When her family forced her to come along with the hajj, she took a picture of herself holding a piece of paper with "Atheist Republic" written on it, while standing inside the Great Mosque of Mecca, the holiest site of Islam.

[8] In May 2017, admins of the Atheist Republic claimed their Facebook page had been shut down three times after what appeared to be a co-ordinated campaign by religious activists.

[18] Atheist Republic's CEO Allie Jackson and Ex-Muslims of North America's president Muhammad Syed made joint efforts to get the pages and groups back online, and launched a Change.org petition (which gathered over 8,000 signatures).

Deputy Minister of Islamic Affairs Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki ordered an inquiry into whether the people in the photograph had committed apostasy, which is illegal in Malaysia,[3] and ex-Muslims can be fined, jailed or sent for counselling.

[19][20] Atheist Republic members present at the gathering who received death threats on social media were being investigated about whether they had 'spread atheism to Muslims', which has also been outlawed in the country.