For anyone unfamiliar with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, she was born into a Muslim family in Somalia. She moved to the Netherlands and became a MP, and lived in the Netherlands until the assassination of Theo Van Gogh, a filmmaker working with Ali on a film critical of the treatment of women by Muslims. The assassin stabbed a death note for Ali into Van Gogh’s chest after he was murdered and nearly beheaded. She has been living in the US since then and has written extensively about leaving Islam, the treatment of women in Islamic culture, and in support of secularism.
She announced recently that she had converted to Christianity. This is quite the shock, given how vocal she has been in the past toward religion.
I am not an atheist because of what any particular person says or writes, and I certainly wish her well in whatever faith or non-faith works for her, but it is a bit sad to lose an eloquent voice for a topic I agree with.
What a really weird article. She doesn’t ever seem to make the claim that she’s a Christian because she believes in Christianity or, specifically, that Christ died for her so she may be granted eternal life. No, she seems to call herself a Christian because other Christians have done a bunch of cool things she likes. She also sees it as a better platform to stand on to enact other social changes.
I heard about this. The person I heard about it from said it was more to combat the “woke left” than an actual belief in God. I don’t know if that’s true. I want to read the article but there’s a paywall. It it’s true, then it’s sad, but I see a lot of people all over, if not questioning if there is a god, at least understand other’s doubts.
I’d start with the Beatitudes from Matthew 5:3-12 and Luke 6 or the fruits of the spirit from Galatians. But … I am atheist, so I am not sure my vote counts.
Once she started in on woke ideology I stopped taking her seriously. I would ask if she genuinely believes that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, who came to earth to die for our sins, and that if you believe on him you shall have eternal life. Because that has much more to do with Christianity than any culture wars. Really though, why should anyone not close to her care what she believes?
Not surprised to see she’s writing for Bari Weiss’s rag.
Of course, and there are millions of people that advocate similar positions that are easy to just ignore.
It is because of what she has championed for the last 20 years or so that makes it so surprising. It would be like if Gloria Steinem suddenly started saying “a woman’s place is in the home, and to serve her husband” or if James Carville suddenly became a Republican. It’s only one person’s opinion, but it goes against what the person has said loudly and forcefully for decades.
Not that it matters, but AHA wrote it for UnHerd, which I don’t believe is affiliated with Weiss. Weiss reprinted the article with the introduction in the link I posted.
In the context of this conversation, I think you might be confusing “belief” with “values.”
I was raised by reasonably devout Christian parents (interestingly, all three of us came to be atheists, each independently of one another) but while I do not believe in Christianity, as in “Christ is the son of god and he died for our sins,” I do hold Christian values as characterized by @running_coach .
That only makes her honest. IMHO, most conversions are for social reasons, not religious ones - people convert because they marry someone, or because they want to join a church, or because spending time with people of a certain religion makes them fell better about themselves, or to make some sort of statement. Actual faith rarely has much to do with it.
It doesn’t read as a purely social conversion. She talks about the “God-shaped hole”, which is a common idea in Evangelical circles. The idea is that the person feels like there’s something missing in their lives that is fulfilled by religion and God.
It sounds to me like she feels like she’s missing something in her life from abandoning religion and the concept of God. She finds atheism unsatisfying.
I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable—indeed very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: What is the meaning and purpose of life?
I will go to my grave baffled by this. Both Jesus and St. Paul repeatedly stress that Christianity is nothing without Faith in Christ as the savior. All the values @running_coach listed can be found in many religions, and don’t require any belief in God.
I guess. I remember her from when the new atheists had their heyday. I haven’t thought about her in years. It always seemed to me that her message was more “fuck Islam” than "here is why God doesn’t exist. "