As Gabr sat in a seafront cafe in his hometown of Alexandria, he spoke about his past opinion of atheists. “I used to think that they should be killed,” he said matter-of-factly.

Gabr – not his real name – was brought up in a moderate Muslim family before becoming a Salafi, a follower of a literalist and puritanical form of Islam. He eventually underwent a radical shift in belief to become one of those people he used to despise: an atheist, an apostate, a kafir – a group of people who feel under threat in Egypt because of their lack of belief in God.

[Read the rest of the article published by Al Jazeera English here]