Why Ayaan Hirsi Ali is now a Christian

I love to read conversion stories. Decades ago, I read John Henry Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua in which the 19th-century cleric and Oxford Movement luminary recounted his departure from the Church of England for Roman Catholicism. Many of us know C. S. Lewis's story of his own conversion to Christianity in Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. However, there are few available stories of Muslims or ex-Muslims converting to Christianity, mostly because abandoning Islam is a punishable offence in many predominantly Muslim countries. There are indeed such converts, but for obvious reasons they prefer to keep a low profile.

Earlier this month, Ayaan Hirsi Ali put aside such reticence and published this statement: Why I am now a Christian. Ali's story may not be familiar to everyone, but here are the basics: Born in Mogadishu, Somalia, to a politically active father who fell afoul of the Marxist regime, she and her family moved to Nairobi, Kenya. After fleeing a forced marriage, she wound up in the Netherlands in her early twenties. She became a Dutch citizen and even served in the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament before moving to the United States and becoming an American citizen. By the turn of the millennium she declared herself to be an atheist, having become disillusioned with her Muslim upbringing.

During Islamic study sessions, we shared with the preacher in charge of the session our worries. For instance, what should we do about the friends we loved and felt loyal to but who refused to accept our dawa (invitation to the faith)? In response, we were reminded repeatedly about the clarity of the Prophet’s instructions. We were told in no uncertain terms that we could not be loyal to Allah and Muhammad while also maintaining friendships and loyalty towards the unbelievers. If they explicitly rejected our summons to Islam, we were to hate and curse them.

Here, a special hatred was reserved for one subset of unbeliever: the Jew. We cursed the Jews [sic] multiple times a day and expressed horror, disgust and anger at the litany of offences he had allegedly committed. The Jew had betrayed our Prophet. He had occupied the Holy Mosque in Jerusalem. He continued to spread corruption of the heart, mind and soul.

You can see why, to someone who had been through such a religious schooling, atheism seemed so appealing.

The 9/11 attacks in 2001 played a large part in moving her to atheism. But now she claims to be a Christian! Why?

Part of the answer is global. Western civilisation is under threat from three different but related forces: 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.

We endeavour to fend off these threats with modern, secular tools: military, economic, diplomatic and technological efforts to defeat, bribe, persuade, appease or surveil. And yet, with every round of conflict, we find ourselves losing ground. We are either running out of money, with our national debt in the tens of trillions of dollars, or we are losing our lead in the technological race with China.

But we can’t fight off these formidable forces unless we can answer the question: what is it that unites us? The response that “God is dead!” seems insufficient. So, too, does the attempt to find solace in “the rules-based liberal international order”. The only credible answer, I believe, lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Conspicuously lacking from Ali's autobiography is a personal encounter with the living God in the person of Jesus Christ, along with a recognition of her own sin and need for repentance. Her principal reason for conversion is overtly utilitarian: Christianity is the basis for western civilization with all its "elaborate set of ideas and institutions designed to safeguard human life, freedom and dignity — from the nation state and the rule of law to the institutions of science, health and learning." Ali doubts that the west can survive cut off from its Judeo-Christian foundation.

When I was younger, I would have been more critical of someone embracing Christianity for its usefulness in upholding order, human rights, or some other good unavailable elsewhere. Indeed I will admit that Ali is still at the beginning stages in her journey and that, as recounted in Jesus' parable of the sower, she could fall away for lack of understanding, absence of roots, or preoccupation with "the cares of the world and the delight in riches" (verse 22). Nevertheless, God's word may yet be firmly planted in her heart, leading her to bear fruit a hundredfold (verse 23). Whatever her reasons for becoming a Christian, I can now more easily recognize that God works through the worst of motives to bring his elect into his kingdom. For now I rejoice at this news and pray that the Holy Spirit will indeed move her heart towards saving faith.

That said, I cannot let this sentence pass without comment: "Unlike Islam, Christianity outgrew its dogmatic stage. It became increasingly clear 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." To be sure, a normative differentiation of society implies that state and gathered church community are distinct institutions with their own respective tasks and spheres of competence. Nevertheless, it is impossible to keep religion out of politics or any other area of life. Every activity we undertake is rooted in a basic worldview of a religious character. Or, as H. Evan Runner put it, life is religion. Christianity does not prescribe a divided life, but an integral one lived coram Deo—before the face of God.

If Ali keeps to her new faith and does not fall away, by God's grace she will learn more about it and what it means, not just for western civilization, but for herself and for her local church community. She will pray daily, attend church regularly, and read through the Bible repeatedly, immersing herself in the word and ways of God. If so, I hope she will one day write her own counterpart to Newman's and Lewis's journeys of faith for the benefit of generations to come.