Hirsi Ali, atheism and Islam[Spengler]

Asia Times Online ^ | 04 Dec 2007 | Spengler

[BGHater]

Few public figures have done more to earn our sympathy than the Muslim apostate Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fugitive from her native Somalia, and now a virtual exile from her adopted country, the Netherlands. Under constant threat since the 2004 murder by an Islamist of her collaborator, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, Hirsi Ali warns the West that Islam presents a mortal threat to its freedoms.

America took her in last year when the Dutch government connived to remove her refugee status, but she remains something of an embarrassment to the George W Bush administration. This autumn the Dutch government removed her security detail, and the Americans have taken no steps to protect her. That is a stain on the honor of both countries.

Although she has the credibility of a witness as well as the moral standing of a victim, Hirsi Ali remains a bystander civilian in the great war of our times, whose broadest front is in the global South. That is, she proclaims herself to be an atheist. Millions of Muslims reportedly convert to Christianity each year, mainly in Africa. Islam is stagnant in Asia while tens of millions become Christian. Yet all the Muslim apostates whose voices we hear are atheists - not only Hirsi Ali, but also Salman Rushdie, the celebrated author of The Satanic Verses, the Syrian poet Adonis, and the pseudonymous Ibn Warraq, author of Why I am not a Muslim and several compendia of Koranic criticism.

Why do Muslim apostates gravitate towards atheism? That is not true of other religions. Many Jewish converts achieved prominence in 20th-century Christianity - for example, the recently deceased Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, the martyred Carmelite nun Edith Stein (now canonized), and the great Protestant theologian Eugene Rosenstock-Huessy. -Snip-

[BGHater]

'The implication that the West will crush Islam by force borders on the absurd. Western armies, to be sure, could make short work of the military forces of any Muslim country, but what would they do then? Would they order Muslims to abandon their spiritual life in favor of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, the heroes of Hirsi Ali? The West cannot stop Muslims from burning in effigy the editors of a Danish newspaper in their own countries.

Secular liberalism, the official ideology of almost all the nations of Western Europe, offers hedonism, sexual license, anomie, demoralization and gradual depopulation. Muslims do not want this. In Africa, Christian missionaries go to Muslims and offer them God's love and the hope of eternal life. But I am aware of no Christian missionaries active in the Muslim banlieue (outskirts) of the Paris suburbs or the Turkish quarters of Berlin.

By contrast, there is indeed a war with Islam, and it is being won in parts of the world where Christians wage it on spiritual grounds. No Christian army has had to march in its support. Europe, meanwhile, is losing ground to Islam because it declines to fight.'

[edcoil]

“atheist’s”

Spend most of their day putting down Christians. I wonder how they would do in a muslim country.

My guess is, quiet as a church mouse.

[PGalt]

Very interesting article. Thanks for posting.

[The_Reader_David]

Among others, Spengler makes the point I have often made here (and on my intermittent blog, orthoopinions.blogspot.com) that al-Ghazahli’s occasionalist epistemology was the death-knell of Islamic science.

[gleeaikin]

Perhaps after being required to prostrate oneself and pray 5 times a day for many years, Muslims are relieved to do absolutely nothing about religion. Incidentally, her book Infidel is a fascinating read. Also, after reading it the case is certainly made for rejecting the barbarism of their sexual treatment of women.

[Tax-chick]

But the name of no prominent Muslim convert to Christianity (much less to Judaism) comes to mind.

How about the Turkish brothers, the Caners? Perhaps Mr. Spengler just hasn't researched this point enough. Maybe Moslem-background Christians don't seek prominence, since self-promotion is contrary to Christianity. Also, it's not a bright move to court publicity if they're continuing to evangelize Moslems.

Another possibility is that the secular media doesn't choose to publicize conversions from Islam to Christianity, since they consider that a step in the wrong direction.

[Raymann]

Ali is a personal hero of mine. We should have protected her as an asset on the WoT. I met her when she first came to DC she’s wonderful in person.

Leaving a religion isn’t easy, leaving Christianity was hard enough for me so leaving Islam had to be a nightmare for her. But it’s worth it when you reach the light at the end of the tunnel. (forgive the expression :) )