Ayaan Hirsi Ali Is a Wake-up Call to the Christian West

The Jesus of the Bible came to do something far more radical than save the West.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a woman who has been victim to some of the worst of religious fundamentalism. At 5, she experienced the horrors of female genital mutilation, performed upon the wishes of a family member in Somalia. At 34, she experienced the loss of a friend in an unconscionably brutal fashion when a Muslim extremist shot her filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, before pinning a note to his dying body with a knife. It was a note to Ali, informing her of her impending execution as an apostate to the Muslim faith. And yet, two decades later, her critics have only managed to fuel her fire as an advocate for Muslim women, a champion of human rights, and until recently an outspoken New Atheist. The last descriptor in that list is the reason her latest article has created such a fuss in the online world: “Why I am now a Christian.”

“The only credible answer [to the decline of the West] … lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition,” Ali writes in describing her conversion. “My atheist friends failed to see the wood for the trees. The wood is the civilisation built on the Judeo-Christian tradition.” It’s a moving piece of prose, and clearly difficult to write—Ali has multiple fatwas for her outspoken criticism of Islam and the “prophet” Muhammed, and her conversion hardly represents a step down in controversy. Yet, in reading her explanation of her newfound faith, one choice of phrase stood out to me: she only mentions the name Jesus Christ once.

This may explain some of the skeptical reaction from certain corners of the Internet: Washington Post columnist and Islamic scholar Shadi Hamid lambasted Ali’s conversion as “completely instrumental,” further asserting that her narrative lacked “the slightest sign of sincere belief.” On perhaps the more charitable side, Rod Dreher saw Ali’s conversion as mirroring much of his own imperfect journey into faith.

“Very few of us came to faith in a clean, intellectually respectable conversion,” Dreher writes. “She is imperfectly Christian today; she may be more perfectly Christian tomorrow.”

Ali’s conversion has done more than upset the outsiders of Christianity—in typical fashion, it has also elicited a slew of speculation of those within the walls, trying to figure out if the newcomer’s a true believer or another pretender to be picked apart and ostracized.

Let’s be clear: I am not here to nitpick conversion stories. If there’s one thing I’ve come to understand from talking with fellow Christians, it’s that God uses all types of backgrounds, experiences, and gifts as a catalyst to usher people into the light of his truth. If the desire to save Western civilization leads one into the arms of Jesus, so be it—none of this should be taken as casting judgment on the genuineness of Ali’s conversion.

Yet, the question raised by Ali’s journey to Christ is far bigger than the story of any singular person, even an intellectual caryatid like Ali. It’s a question for all of us who lash our Christian faith to the mast of social critique and sail the oft-stormy seas of political life: are we using Jesus as a tool by which to save Western civilization, or have we looked into the deep pools of Western thought and found Jesus at the bottom?

The struggle to reconcile Christian faith with political objectives has been one that has challenged many of the West’s greatest thinkers; from Wilberforce to Washington, achieving social victory with a soul intact is no easy game. Now it’s Ali’s turn, and our turn as well. To be sure, it’s not impossible. As controversial as it is to say, the fundamental objectives of the West are not at odds with the message of the Jesus I and billions of others claim as Lord and savior. Championing the freedom of “the least of these,” protecting the human agency highlighted by the free enterprise system, and the full-throated defense of human dignity as a foil against nihilism and rabid expressive individualism—these are the goals of a Christian every bit as much as they are the goals of Western civilization. The present multiplicity of threats massing against the West lays out this charge in clear lines: the barbarians are at the gates, in both distant lands and in the walls of American cities. The path forward, whether at home or abroad, involves realizing that many of those barbarians see the destruction of Christianity as part and parcel of taking down the West. As attacks on the West mount, attacks on Christianity follow—it should come as no surprise that the current moment is opening the door of evangelism to those who see the survival of Western civilization as paramount.

But that’s where the divide emerges most profoundly: you can have Christianity without jumping into the war to save the West (although I’d argue you’re not taking the faith to its natural conclusion). But you cannot truly have Christianity without grappling with the person and work of Christ.

The Jesus of the Bible didn't come first and foremost to restore the West's broken social institutions or fight off the ravages of true wokeness and totalitarianism (although we arguably should strive for such things as His followers). He came for something far more radical—the release of ordinary people from the power of the sin indwelling our very souls. “Christ’s teaching implie[s] not only a circumscribed role for religion as something separate from politics,” Ali continues in her conversion narrative. “It also implie[s] compassion for the sinner and humility for the believer.”

I don't think Ali's lack of focus on Jesus means she doesn't understand or believe in his primacy to Christianity. A relationship with Jesus is far more complicated to put into earthly words than one's relationship with Western civilization. Furthermore, as a Twitter native, I can hardly fault a new convert for not baring the depths of their soul to the freakin’ INTERNET.

But her conversion is as good a time as any to do some soul-searching of our own.

In his 1951 classic Christ and Culture, theologian Richard Neibuhr spoke of “the double movement from world to God and from God to world.” That’s the dichotomy all Christians must walk daily—even intellectuals like Ali—in understanding the nature of Christianity. Is Jesus, the one we talk about on Sundays and cite as our reason for being in the political arena at all, merely a Jesus capable of fixing economies, reversing social decay, and confronting the rabid secularism of our day? As Christians, we are compelled to believe he is more: the son of God demanding allegiance above any civilization and offering life and forgiveness more eternal than that offered by any leader or government. That’s the heartrendingly beautiful part of how Christianity works—and maybe that’s the part we political Christians need to be internalizing a little more.

This article was published in edited form at The Gospel Coalition. Read it here.