Human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali announced Saturday she has abandoned 20 years of atheism to become a Christian as “Western civilisation is under threat” from a multitude of forces that seek its destruction.
The Somali-born former Muslim who endured female genital mutilation (FGM) as a child wrote a column for UnHerd simply titled “Why I am now a Christian” where she outlined the embrace of her new faith and declared “atheism can’t equip us for civilisational war.”
The research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution wrote of being born into a Muslim family and then the years that followed as a religious activist driving “Islamism” saying, “I learned from my years with the Muslim Brotherhood was the power of a unifying story, embedded in the foundational texts of Islam, to attract, engage and mobilise the Muslim masses. Unless we offer something as meaningful, I fear the erosion of our civilisation will continue.”
File/Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali attends a book presentation of ‘Refurbished you! Why Islam must change’ on April 20, 2015 in Berlin, Germany. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, born 13 November 1969, is a Somalia-born American activist, writer and politician and is known for her views critical of Islam and supportive of women’s rights. (Christian Marquardt/Getty Images)
After 20 years of embracing atheism after turning away from Islam, the former Dutch Parliamentarian and author said “fortunately, there is no need to look for some new-age concoction of medication and mindfulness.” The activist simply said “Christianity has it all,” adding:
That is why I no longer consider myself a Muslim apostate, but a lapsed atheist. Of course, I still have a great deal to learn about Christianity. I discover a little more at church each Sunday. But I have recognised, in my own long journey through a wilderness of fear and self-doubt, that there is a better way to manage the challenges of existence than either Islam or unbelief had to offer.
Ali has previously warned Islam is on the rise across the world and jihadist groups have proliferated even as the rest of the world professed to be ready to counter its spread.
The spread of Islam has come despite the U.S. alone spending at least $3.6 trillion on combat and reconstruction costs in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan and sacrificing more than 5,000 American service members and the tens of thousands of wounded U.S. troops.
As Breitbart News reported, the activist warned in 2017 “According to one estimate, 10−15 percent of the world’s Muslims are Islamists. Out of well over 1.6 billion, or 23 percent of the globe’s population, that implies more than 160 million individuals. Based on survey data on attitudes toward sharia in Muslim countries, total support for Islamist activities in the world is likely significantly higher than that estimate.”
File/Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Amanda Parker attend Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World Gala at the Frederick P. Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center on May 5, 2009 in New York City. (Jemal Countess/WireImage for Time Inc.)
File/Somalia born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an MP for the Liberal Party in the Netherlands, poses 08 March 2005 before attending a seminar for the International Women’s Day “Combating violence against women” inside the plenary session of the E.U. in Strasbourg. (GERARD CERLES/AFP via Getty)
Now she has turned her back on both Islam and atheism to embrace her Christian beliefs and feels ready to rejoin the battle against Islamism. She wrote in her essay:
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.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali gave the keynote address at a sold-out event in Boston in 2015 that centered on rising anti-semitism on college campuses in North America.
She said then students are being “misled.” Denouncing “virulent anti-Semitism” on college campuses, she asserted freedom must be fought for and defended wherever it is challenged: “The least we can do is boycott, divest, and sanction campuses that compromise academic freedom.”