Ateş is best known for challenging conventional ideas in Islamic teaching by opening a mosque in Berlin which breaks with traditionalist precepts of what being a Muslim means.

While working at a women's centre in 1984, she was shot in the neck by a Turkish nationalist ("his exact motives unclear" even a generation later, according to the New York Times).

The client she was counseling was killed by the attacker, and Ateş, during her long recuperation, decided to devote herself even more to helping Turkish-background women achieve their rights in Germany.

[2] Her views, highly critical of an immigrant Muslim society that is often more conservative than its counterpart in Turkey, have put her at risk.

[7] The Turkish religious authority and the Egyptian Fatwa Council at the Al-Azhar University have condemned her project, and she has received death threats.

[12] The 2021 documentary Seyran Ateş: Sex, Revolution and Islam features her life as a feminist, lawyer and mosque founder.