By Ron F. Hale, special to the Baptist Message
JACKSON, Tenn. (LBM) — Ayann Hirsi Ali, a former Dutch politician, apostate Muslim and now a defector from “New Atheism” is professing Christianity as her newfound religion, and the recent change of paths in her journey of belief has shocked the world of elite thinkers and writers.
Her recent article, “Why I Am Now a Christian,” does not offer any kind of reference to a conversion experience. The closest she comes to making a declaration of faith in Jesus is to state that “Christ’s teaching implied not only a circumscribed role for religion as something separate from politics. It also implied compassion for the sinner and humility for the believer.
“I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable — indeed very nearly self-destructive,” she added. “Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?”
Yet, her declaration of being an adherent of Christianity has caused deep discussions in high circles, especially of atheists, around the world.
Ayann’s life story began in Somalia in 1969, born to Hiri Magan Isse, a leader in the Somali Revolution. During his imprisonment, Ayann was subjected to female genital mutilation while just five years old. After he escaped from captivity, he took his family to Saudi Arabia then Ethiopia before settling down in Nairobi, Kenya in 1980.
Ayann received an excellent education in Nairobi, where she learned English and encountered a radical version of Islam from the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. She wore the traditional burka and rejected Western fashion and make-up. However, she refused to concede to an arranged and forced marriage and fled to the Netherlands in 1992.
There her disillusionment with Islam grew dramatically after the al-Qaeda attacks on America, Sept. 11, 2001. Soon, she renounced Islam completely and retreated into the world of atheism—absorbing the writings of Betrand Russell and his 1927 lecture, “Why I am Not a Christian,” and finding fellowship with astute and angry atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.
With her ability to speak six languages, she served in the Dutch Parliament, gaining fame and infamy as a compelling critic of Islam, which brought threats and attacks. She now resides in the United States and has written a string of best-selling books: Infidel (2008), Nomad (2011), Heretic (2015) and Prey (2021).
Ayann confesses she has “a great deal to learn about Christianity.” But for now, after 50-something years of living by other ideological paradigms, she now sees Christianity as “a better way to manage the challenges of existence than either Islam or unbelief had to offer.”
Ayann poses and answers the rhetorical question, “Why do I call myself a Christian now?” by distilling the world’s woes into three Goliath-like dangers: “the resurgence of great-power authoritarianism and expansionism in the forms of the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin’s Russia; the rise of global Islamism, which threatens to mobilise a vast population against the West; and the viral spread of woke ideology, which is eating into the moral fibre of the next generation.”
In testimonial style, Ayann explains how “We can’t withstand China, Russia and Iran if we can’t explain to our populations why it matters that we do. We can’t fight woke ideology if we can’t defend the civilisation that it is determined to destroy. And we can’t counter Islamism with purely secular tools. To win the hearts and minds of Muslims here in the West, we have to offer them something more than videos on TikTok.”
A civilizational warning is described to us by Ayann Hirsi Ali. Bullets, bombs, and ballistic missiles will not topple this evil trinity of ideological giants. The lies and half-truths of radical Islam, atheism, and communism will survive after the smoke has cleared to plant the seeds of hate among any survivors.
Using G.K. Chesterton’s line of reason, she drives the point home by saying: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
Christians in the West must join in spiritual warfare to combat the deconstructing forces purposefully tearing down our values, morals, and biblical beliefs. We must unite against “cultural Marxism” which weaves a wicked web of deceit around all three of the global Goliath’s that Ayann has spelled out as global threats.
We must understand the goals of men from the Frankfurt School in Germany as they fled Europe before, during, and after World War II and found safety in Ivy League Universities to formulate and foment their “long march” through the cultural structures of American society. Things like religion, family, media, and education must be turned upside down and radically transformed. The invasive philosophy of cultural Marxism is now more clearly visible which includes a cabal of constructs known as critical theory, multiculturalism, political correctness, intersectionality, identity politics, white privilege, critical race theory—in short, wokeness.
We must change the nagging new narratives that grate and goad our young people to flee from our historic capitalist free market economy and Judeo-Christian moral foundation. Those pitting the “oppressed” against the “oppressors” must be challenged with truth, hope, and facts.
Thank you for making your public profession of these new religious beliefs, Ayann Hirsi Ali, and for using them to address these looming global threats through the lens of a Christian worldview. My prayer for you will be that as you learn more about Christianity you will develop a deeper relationship with the Author of these teachings, but more so as the Savior of the world.
Ron F. Hale is a pastor and writer who has published articles with The Stream, The Christian Post, American Thinker, The Christian Index and Baptist state papers.
