Ayaan Hirsi Ali's conversion from Islam to Christianity: Such a big story, so little coverage

November 21, 2023 Julia Duin

For years, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been the poster child in the West for the post-Islamic woman. She’s been a freedom fighter for feminism and a warrior against female genital mutilation after having undergone the procedure herself at 5 years of age in Somalia.

Having grown up as a Muslim, she eventually fled to the Netherlands to escape a forced marriage. Within 10 years, she was a member of the Dutch Parliament. As she became a rising star in Dutch politics, she released a statement embracing atheism, as she no longer believed the Muslim teachings in which she grew up. Her autobiography “Infidel,” came with a forward by fellow atheist Christopher Hitchens.

Connected with the Hoover Institute, she lives in California now, raising two sons and married to historian Niall Ferguson. She lives under police protection because of the steady stream of threats against her life from Muslim extremists.

You’d think that such a woman — especially in light of the what’s happening in the streets of Western countries these days between Muslims and Jews — would lie low.

But no, Hirsi-Ali chose to make one of her life’s more shattering pronouncements known on an American holiday — Nov. 11 — on Unherd.com, a British website most of us had never heard of. Her essay, “Why I am Now a Christian” with the subtitle “Atheism cannot equip us for civilizational war” seemed guaranteed to get her a quick death fatwa, if nothing else.

One would also assume that her conversion would be “news,” as in an event worthy of mainstream news coverage — but apparently not.

Be sure to read that before you go much further with this piece. A follow-up video, for which you must log in is here.

Her idea stems from Samuel P. Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” idea whereby future wars will not be fought between countries as much as between civilizations. It is also a response to British logician and mathematician Bertrand Russell’s 1927 speech, “Why I am Not a Christian,” delivered in London. Back then, people were as shocked to hear a member of the intelligentsia say he was not a Christian as they are to hear a member today say that she is.

Hirsi-Ali’s thesis is, in part:

Western civilization 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 mobilize a vast population against the West; and the viral spread of woke ideology, which is eating into the moral fiber of the next generation.

We endeavor 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…

The only credible answer, I believe, lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Specialty websites, social-media platforms (think X) and religious sites all had something to say in response. But the deafening silence came from one source — mainstream news media.

I’ve yet to see one serious news report out there and it’s been going on two weeks since the news came out.

The Washington Post had nothing. The New York Times had a column by Ross Douthat but no news story even though Hirsi-Ali’s conversion is pretty amazing news. Wall Street Journal: Nada. How about California media? LA Times? No. San Francisco Chronicle? Nope. San Jose Mercury-News? Not a chance

Now I know that religion-beat specialists are a scarce commodity these days in American media, but this is ridiculous. Hirsi-Ali has been so famous world-wide for standing up to Muslim fanatics; for having an insider’s view of Islam; for being a woman of color from Africa who gets what oppression is all about; this is a woman who on other occasions has been lionized by that same media.

But — alas — as Rich Lowry wrote for Politico, Hirsi-Ali has been “a dissident from the wrong religion” because it’s uncool to criticize Islam these days, even if it’s a Muslim doing it. Oh, and then there is the atheism angle.

Anyway, in the hope that some media outlet does get around to interviewing Hirsi-Ali (and I hear that The Free Press is planning a podcast interview), there are some questions she should be asked.

Hirsi-Ali’s first public profession of faith was remarkably light on anything to do with theology, doctrine or the founder of Christianity — Jesus himself. Thus, I’d start by asking:

* What brought her to this point?
* Were there specific mentors who shepherded her toward a decision to become a Christian?
* Was there was a time when she decided to become one and when she formally acknowledged her new faith? How did she do so? And where? Was she at a church? Sitting home in front of a TV listening to an evangelist?
* Has she been baptized?
* What church does she attend? Catholic? Protestant? Orthodox? With her husband Niall? Is he converting along with her? Do they dare show up at church, in that the punishment Muslims mete out for “apostates” is death?

* Or is her decision to identify as Christian more of an intellectual one; what we call a “civilizational assessment?”
* How long was she in coming to this decision and, why make this announcement now?

* In her essay, she says she finds solace in Christianity. How so?

If you want to get decent coverage, the religion sites and the atheist sites are your best bet. Try Michael Shermer’s video on the atheist POV. The Ayn Rand Institute’s response is here.

I chanced upon an essay by Andy Bannister on the British site premierchristianity.com that was clever.

Ali’s astonishing announcement that she has become a Christian, almost as surprising as if Richard Dawkins had entered the priesthood. Social media lit up like a Christmas tree: disappointed atheists accused her of treachery; while Christians — well, some rejoiced, but others urged caution: “Hang on a moment, isn’t her conversion a bit…insipid?"

It was noted that in her conversion story, the name of Jesus is never mentioned, let alone the cross. I understand this hesitancy, and have some sympathy with it, not least because I worry about celebrity conversions, but let me also offer some observations.

Following this, he makes an allusion to a phase in the life of C.S. Lewis where he was a “theist,” and thus barely inside the fold of Christianity as a “reluctant convert.”