[1] He created the Ex-Muslims of North America (EXMNA) advocacy group in 2013 which seeks to normalize religious dissent and to help former Muslims leave the religion by linking them to support networks.

"[5] He said his understanding of evolution came mostly from the book Cosmos by Carl Sagan, which did not make him question his faith directly but set him on a path to secularism.

[4] Syed attended a conference of the Islamic Society of North America, where Anwar Ibrahim (Malaysia's deputy prime minister, 1993–8) roundly condemned the recently uncovered Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse by American soldiers (April 2004), which received loud applause from the audience.

However, Anwar Ibrahim went on to say that prisons like Abu Ghraib or worse existed throughout the Muslim world, asked the audience how often they had spoken out against human rights violations against prisoners and others by Muslims in Muslim-majority countries, and accused them of hypocrisy (Anwar Ibrahim himself had been imprisoned in solitary confinement from April 1999 to September 2004[8]).

[6] The group's spokesman, Nas Ishmael, stresses that they criticize the ideology of the Islamic doctrine and "do not stand for any kind of anti-Muslim bigotry".

"[13] In a 2014 interview with the Richard Dawkins Foundation, Syed further explained the risk involved, saying that many of their members have been beaten, disowned, and kicked out of their family homes.

[14] In a 2016 interview with Areo Magazine, the group said that a lot of their members are immigrants, so they have a difficult time fitting in with the broader American culture if they are disowned by their family and community.

"[18] In September of 2016, he spoke at the annual conference of the American Humanist Association on the topic of "Examining Honor Culture & Violence in Islam.

Attorney Andrew Seidel wrote a letter to Wegmans on June 20 describing their decision as a potential civil rights violation.

[23][24] In an open letter, Syed wrote that the Facebook and other social media platforms were not doing enough to protect vulnerable groups from malicious attacks.

He further stated "Arab atheists, Bangladeshi secularists, and numerous other groups have been under attack for years, as religious conservatives in the Muslim world learn to abuse Facebook’s reporting system to their advantage.