Dating & Relationship status

Haider grew up in Karachi, Pakistan, in a practicing Shia Muslim family. Her family moved to the US when she was seven years of age.and she was raised in Houston, Texas. She was a devout Muslim as a child. In a 2017 interview with the blog Gene Expression, she said of her religious participation:

In 2017 Haider decided to take EXMNA on a tour around the US and Canada to speak at college campuses throughout the 2017–2018 academic year. EXMNA spoke on a variety of topics that affect Muslims and ex-Muslims.

Her father has since become an atheist as well. Haider described the journey to atheism with her father to the Reason Rally in 2016 as a long series of debates spanning over a decade. However, it was not until her father discovered FB account name groups of other Pakistani atheists that had active members who were his age that he felt comfortable leaving Islam. She now advises ex-Muslims to find their family secular peers to make them more comfortable leaving religion.

In 2015 she gave a speech called “Islam and the Necessity of Liberal Critique” at the American Humanist Association’s 74th annual conference in Denver, Colorado, that has been widely viewed since uploaded to YouTube. During an interview with Dave Rubin she explained her excitement by saying “it felt like my whole life was leading up to that speech.” However she said she was nervous to deliver the speech, believing the topic of Islam and dissent to be “sensitive”, yet was delighted at how well the speech was received. Haider, a self-described liberal, is disheartened by what she feels is a hostile attitude towards Ex-Muslims by her fellow liberals. She has said women who leave Islam often “face ostracism, beatings, harassment and threats from their families and communities, forced travel back to home countries to pry them free of Western influence, and forced marriage,” and therefore should be among the most welcomed by the liberal community. However, she feels that she and other Ex-Muslims are shunned by the left, having been called an Islamophobe. Haider has stated that this makes the position of ex-Muslim atheists precarious because “the political right is not our friend. We don’t have allies on the right due to our atheism,” but at the same time she feels Ex-Muslims also have very few allies on the left.

In 2013 Haider and Muhammad Syed co-founded Ex-Muslims of North America (EXMNA), an advocacy organization and online community which aims to normalize religious dissent and to helping create local support communities for those who have left Islam. The organization was first based in just Washington, DC, and Toronto, but is now active in over 25 locations in the US and Canada.