A former Muslim Brotherhood acolyte who became an atheist has explained in an online column why it is Christianity – and Christianity alone – that holds the answer in today’s turmoil- and threat-filled world.
“The ‘God hole’ – the void left by the retreat of the church – has merely been filled by a jumble of irrational quasi-religious dogma. The result is a world where modern cults prey on the dislocated masses, offering them spurious reasons for being and action — mostly by engaging in virtue-signaling theater on behalf of a victimised minority or our supposedly doomed planet. The line often attributed to G.K. Chesterton has turned into a prophecy: ‘When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything,’” explained Ayaan Hirsi Ali in a column at unherd.
Ali, a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, continued, “In this nihilistic vacuum, the challenge before us becomes civilisational. We can’t withstand China, Russia and Iran if we can’t explain to our populations why it matters that we do. We can’t fight woke ideology if we can’t defend the civilisation that it is determined to destroy. And we can’t counter Islamism with purely secular tools. To win the hearts and minds of Muslims here in the West, we have to offer them something more than videos on TikTok.
“The lesson 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. And fortunately, there is no need to look for some new-age concoction of medication and mindfulness. Christianity has it all.”
She noted her conflict erupted after 9/11 when she condemned that terror attack.
“They had done it in the name of my religion, Islam. I was a Muslim then, although not a practising one. If I truly condemned their actions, then where did that leave me? The underlying principle that justified the attacks was religious, after all: the idea of Jihad or Holy War against the infidels. Was it possible for me, as for many members of the Muslim community, simply to distance myself from the action and its horrific results?”
She turned at that time to a skepticism about religious doctrine.
“It was a relief to … discard my faith in God and declare that no such entity existed. Best of all, I could reject the existence of hell and the danger of everlasting punishment,” she said.
She said her teachings in Islam taught her to hate anyone who was not in Islam, including a “special hatred” for Jews.
“We cursed the Jews multiple times a day and expressed horror, disgust and anger at the litany of offences he had allegedly committed. The Jew had betrayed our Prophet. He had occupied the Holy Mosque in Jerusalem. He continued to spread corruption of the heart, mind and soul.”
But Islam failed her and atheism offered “a simple, zero-cost escape from an unbearable life of self-denial and harassment of other people.”
What now has changed, she explained, was new threats to Western civilization, from the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the rise of global Islamism and spread of woke ideology.
For success against those foes, she said, the “only credible answer” is the desire to affirm the legacy of the “Judeo-Christian tradition.”
“That legacy consists of an elaborate set of ideas and institutions designed to safeguard human life, freedom and dignity — from the nation state and the rule of law to the institutions of science, health and learning. As Tom Holland has shown in his marvellous book Dominion, all sorts of apparently secular freedoms — of the market, of conscience and of the press — find their roots in Christianity.”
“I have turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unbearable — indeed very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: What is the meaning and purpose of life?”
This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
This post originally appeared on WND News Center.