2006 saw the release of Ayaan Hirsi Ali‘s book, Infidel. It told how she was born in Somalia but her mother and her sister and her brother had to flee to Kenya and Saudi Arabia and other countries to avoid the war in civil wars in Somalia. Growing up, she saw many Islamic purification movements in the neighborhoods and schools. Her family was very fundamentalist and she would receive beatings from her mother for any divergent thoughts or questions. She would waver between being a radical and a fundamentalist and her personal doubts. She even met and briefly dated an atheist Muslim, who planted a seed of doubt in her.

When she was old enough, she was granted an opportunity to go and live in the Netherlands. She saw a different way of life there. She saw that not everyone killed each other over doctrinal points and that not all women had to receive genital mutilation. Based on her disagreements with Islam, she decided that God did not exist. Her beliefs against belief were reinforced and solidified by the 9/11 attacks. She rejected Christianity at that time as well, but remained friendly towards Christians–even though she never thought she would becomes one!

For people like Christopher Hitchens, the famous anti-theist author of God is not Great, How Religion Poisons Rverything (2007), and the infamous Dr. Richard Dawkins, she was a star! All atheists loved her, In 2010, she won the coveted The Emperor has no Clothes award from the Freedom From Religion Foundation (Ayaan Hirsi Ali – Freedom From Religion Foundation (ffrf.org)). But the remainder of her family rejected her and her present beliefs. Also, a Dutch filmmaker who wanted to make an experimental art film about her life was murdered.

After reading Infidel myself, I could understand how she arrived at a rejection of religion. I know that I have had to go through several bad experiences with religious people of the Christian persuasion. I believe that describing even one of these experiences would make most people’s toes curl. However, I have always believed that Jesus and God are very different than these people who are desperate for me to believe the way that they do/who want to disciple me to put another notch in their belt/or who just don’t like some beliefs that I may have. I remember praying that she would see and understand the truth in God’s Word, whatever she saw that to be.

Thankfully, I have read lately that Ms. Ali has come to faith in Christ on her own. I am sure there have been and are a lot of people praying for her. She said in a recent article that:

The “God hole,” as she described it, inevitably left a void that has been filled by a “jumble of irrational, quasi-religious dogma.”Longtime atheist and former Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali reveals she is now Christian (msn.com)

I am sure that Dr. Richard Dawkins is very angry at this and that Mr. Hitchens is spinning in his grave! I hope that she continues with Jesus and receives that crown of glory promised to her.

1 Corinthians 2:14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.

————————————————————-W.