In May 2017, Muhammad Syed's Facebook group for EXMNA (24,000 members) was shut down due to being targeted by Islamic fundamentalist groups. Other ex-Muslim atheist groups that were simultaneously taken down by the Islamist mass flagging operation (under the slogan "Report anti-Islamic pages") also included thousands or tens of thousands of members, and also targeted the public page of Atheist Republic (more than 1.6 million likes). 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." Together with Atheist Republic, Syed started a petition to get the groups reinstated and to further "prevent religious extremists from censoring atheists and secularists” in the future.
