A Winding, Surprising Path: Muslim, Atheist, Christian

Is there someone about whom you think, “He/She would NEVER become a follower of Jesus!”?

Somalia is hardly a vacation destination. Perched on the Horn of Africa’s northern and eastern coasts, the US State Department strongly warns US citizens to avoid it since it’s the home base of terror groups like Al-Shabaab and ISIS-Somalia.

After nine years of independence from Great Britain, in 1969 army officers seized key government buildings in Somalia and demanded that the country’s leaders resign. When they did, a new government was installed—one widely believed to have been backed by the Soviet Union. The coup was called the “Bloodless Revolution” since no gunshots had been fired. Maybe not on that day, but the coup actually began six days earlier when the president’s bodyguard pumped seven bullets into him.

It was a month later that a Muslim couple living in a small house in Somalia, gave birth to a baby girl. In addition to her mother, her father was also married to another woman—something sanctioned by their Islamic faith. Neither parent had any idea how prominent their daughter would one day become, nor how fiercely she would come to oppose her faith. In 2005, TIME magazine identified Ayaan Hirsi Ali as one of the world’s 100 most influential persons.

About ten years ago I read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s moving autobiography, Infidel. She remembers a nomadic childhood of chaos and poverty—sometimes without a father, not only in Somalia, but also Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya. Despite being deeply influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood as a teenager, she eventually fled to the Netherlands to avoid an arranged marriage to a Muslim man in Canada. Zealously applying herself, she became a citizen, earned an M.A. in political science, and eventually was elected to the Dutch Parliament 2003-2006. In 2004 she collaborated with Dutch film producer Theo van Gogh to make Submission, a controversial film about violence against Muslim women. Months after its release, van Gogh was murdered by a radical Islamist. Ayaan was given a security detail for around-the-clock protection.

In 2006, she left Holland for the US where she began AHA, an educational and activist foundation that works on behalf of Muslim women, as well as free speech and human rights issues. Besides advocating for Islamic women, she became a fierce opponent of Islam itself. And then…, an atheist. Through her writings and speeches, she became nearly as influential as the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism: Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. In fact, some called her the Fifth Horseman—or Horsewoman. Not only did the New Atheists not believe in God, they were rabid missionaries trying to convince others of the truthfulness of their convictions.

And then, 2023.

Wanting to end her life and having battled deep depression for a decade, Ayaan had seen countless therapists. One raised the possibility that perhaps her real problem was not just depression or anxiety, but that she was “spiritually bankrupt.” If true—the woman suggested, she should try to do something about it. The suggestion so resonated with her that she prayed.

And God met her. She now calls herself a Christian.

Remember—as she points out herself in the following video, she’s very new to Christianity and still sorting things out. But in this powerful—and first public encounter with Horseman friend Richard Dawkins following her conversion, you’ll see a humility and honesty that seems telling.