This weekend, brilliant former-Muslim atheist, writer and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Ayaan Hirsi Ali announced to the world that she was now a Christian. Almost immediately, suspicions about the sincerity and reality of her newly claimed faith were expressed both by secular thinkers she had left behind and by some Christians. Are his reasons for conversion good? Does she know what she’s doing?
She admits it herself: “I have a lot to learn about Christianity” and “I discover a little more at church every Sunday”. But that’s not a problem: even the greatest minds of Christian history have much to learn. One of the first names given to Christianity was “the way” (Acts 24:14). Ayaan Hirsi Ali is on his way, not only with Christian thoughts, but also with the audacity to live as if God existed.
A Muslim of Somali descent, Ali moved to the Netherlands in 1992, largely to escape a forced marriage. A brilliant woman who eventually learned six languages, she earned a master’s degree in political science from Leiden University and began working for a center-left political party. After September 11, her disillusionment with Islam increased, and the following year she announced her disbelief in God. While in the Dutch Parliament, she collaborated with Theo Van Gogh on a film about Islam’s treatment of women entitled Submission. The film and its virulent criticism of Islam earned it the enmity of a large part of the Muslim population. Van Gogh was murdered and Hirsi Ali was forced into hiding. After a controversy over her Dutch citizenship (she had changed certain details of her biography, notably by using her grandfather’s last name, “Ali”, during her application in order to escape relatives unhappy with her refusal of the forced marriage), Hirsi Ali moved to the United States. in 2006. She has since worked for the American Enterprise Institute, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and the Hoover Institution while producing a series of bestselling books and raising two children with her husband, historian Niall Ferguson.
In her article has Hurry up“Why I’m Now a Christian,” Hirsi Ali begins after 9/11, when she was horrified by attacks carried out and defended in the name of Islam. She felt “cognitive dissonance” because “many prominent leaders in the West – politicians, academics, journalists and other experts” had “insisted that the terrorists were motivated by reasons other than those they and their leader Osama bin Laden had invoked. articulated so clearly. This cognitive dissonance was eased when she read philosopher Bertrand Russell’s 1927 essay “Why I Am Not a Christian.”
While secularists often accuse believers of adopting faith simply for comfort in the face of fear, Hirsi Ali admits that her own adoption of Russell’s atheism was largely motivated by such considerations. His teenage years, spent under the instruction of the Muslim Brotherhood, had been exciting because the emphasis was on being “activists” and not just “passive believers”. “We didn’t just say things or pray for things: we did things.” From donning the burqa to ditching makeup to doing charity work and “demanding that non-Muslims convert to Islam,” it was a pleasure. But aside excitement, there was the perpetual threat of punishment for the things she loved: “reading novels, listening to music, dancing and going to the movies…” There was also the order to s ‘refrain from friendship with and even “hate and curse” those who do not convert to Islam – especially Jews, for whom “special hatred” was reserved. He was asked to curse Jews several times per day under penalty of being punished for disloyalty to Allah.
In this context, she explains why “atheism seemed so attractive.” Russell’s unbelief “offered a simple and free escape from an unbearable life of self-denial and harassment of others. For him, there was no credible proof of the existence of God. Religion, Russell argued, was rooted in fear: “Fear is the basis of everything: fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. » By getting rid of God, she thought she had gotten rid of fear. Atheists Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins were both “intelligent” and “very funny.”
But the solace she felt in shedding God and clinging to Western ideas of freedom was short-lived. In examining the threats to Western civilization, she discovered that Western civilization does not take care of itself. This requires an answer to the question “what unites us?” » And she discovered that neither the cry “God is dead!” nor will the credo of a “rules-based international order” suffice. Atheism cannot answer the “simple question” of the “meaning and purpose of life.” Thus, “it is too weak and too divisive a doctrine to fortify us against our threatening enemies,” whether Chinese communism, Putin’s aggression, the mullahs of Iran, or the “mess of irrational quasi-religious dogmas” which is the modern sect. of awakening. “The only credible answer,” she concludes, “lies in our desire to perpetuate the heritage of the Judeo-Christian tradition. »
Western civilization, in other words, has more to do with religion than geography. It “consists of an elaborate set of ideas and institutions designed to safeguard human life, liberty and dignity – from the nation-state and the rule of law to the institutions of science, health and learning”. She draws on the case of secular historian Tom Holland, presented in his book Domination, that all these glorious flowers “find their roots in Christianity”. Unlike Islam, which has always been a potent mix of politics and religion, Christianity gives “a limited role to religion, as something distinct from politics.”
While secular apostles such as Steven Pinker have responded by calling for a return to the ancient religion of the Enlightenment, it is clear that Hirsi Ali cannot believe the myth of the modern world that originated in the minds of a few secular European philosophers. No, they may have plucked some of the most beautiful flowers of the Christian heritage, but without belief in the fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man was a fiasco.
But the question remains: is this a Christian faith? Given its emphasis on preserving civilization, this does indeed seem utilitarian. Christian teacher Adam Ellwanger cast doubt on her statement: “No mention, however, as to whether she considers the fundamental claims of Christianity (Christ’s death, resurrection, and substitutionary atonement for the sins of the world) to be TRUE,” adding: “Faith in the truth of these statements. is the defining characteristic of a Christian.
While these questions about his specific doctrinal beliefs are important, it is important to note that his statement does not constitute a complete profession of faith or a systematic theological treatise. It is an announcement and the beginning of an argument in favor of Christianity among friends and followers for whom such theological specificities could be wasted. The great Victorian Catholic John Henry Newman once observed that the arguments for Christianity offered by writers “are clues and samples of the true reasoning” in which those writers themselves engaged. The writer Mary Harrington speculated that despite Hirsi Ali’s “utilitarian way of talking about Christianity in this essay…I’ll bet any money she had a full conversion in Damascus and it’s just too personal to talk about.” » Given Hirsi Ali’s reference to Christianity’s “compassion for the sinner and humility for the believer”, as well as “my own long journey through a wilderness of fear and self-doubt” , Harrington’s bet seems to be winning.
Hirsi Ali might well be reluctant to discuss the theological and spiritual depths of his journey. And, given her role as a public thinker, that might as well be. The writings of Christian apologists, Newman said, are chosen to “excite and direct the thoughts” of the reader. Hirsi Ali’s Christian apology here may not fit the mold of a certain type of Christian witness, but it says something very true that may well excite and direct the thoughts of many seekers. As Christian philosopher Nancy Pearcey said summaryHirsi Ali argues for Christianity “understood as a comprehensive worldview that can oppose competing worldviews, from naturalism and materialism to Islam.”
Even if Hirsi’s personal faith was the size of a mustard seed, we reliably know that it will move mountains. And even if it was more theoretical than personal, it would still make sense to encourage her to act like a Christian. The late Pope Benedict XVI is famous disputed the children of the Enlightenment, as Hirsi Ali recently considered himself, faced with the loss of the norms created by Christianity: “Even he who cannot find the way to accept God must nevertheless seek to live and direct his life ‘veluti si Deus daretur’, as if God existed.
Hirsi Ali’s account of her new Christian conviction seems to suggest that she has discovered this truth. She sees that Christian commitment seems theoretically necessary to the fruits of the civilization she loves. But even more, she sees that it is personally necessary for her to believe. She dares to live and direct her life as if God existed.
David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, and is a senior contributor to The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @davidpdeavel.
