Conversion

For John, BLUF:  To steal from the British, we are a land of hope and glory.  I am happy that Ms Ayaan Hirsi Ali decided to come to our shores and I appreciate her contributions to our nation.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Why I am now a Christian

Here is the sub-headline:

Atheism can't equip us for civilisational war

From UnHerd, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, November 11, 2023.

Here is the lede plus three:

In 2002, I discovered a 1927 lecture by Bertrand Russell entitled “Why I am Not a Christian”.  It did not cross my mind, as I read it, that one day, nearly a century after he delivered it to the South London branch of the National Secular Society, I would be compelled to write an essay with precisely the opposite title.

The year before, I had publicly condemned the terrorist attacks of the 19 men who had hijacked passenger jets and crashed them into the twin towers in New York.  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?

At the time, there were many eminent leaders in the West — politicians, scholars, journalists, and other experts — who insisted that the terrorists were motivated by reasons other than the ones they and their leader Osama Bin Laden had articulated so clearly.  So Islam had an alibi.

This excuse-making was not only condescending towards Muslims.  It also gave many Westerners a chance to retreat into denial.  Blaming the errors of US foreign policy was easier than contemplating the possibility that we were confronted with a religious war.  We have seen a similar tendency in the past five weeks, as millions of people sympathetic to the plight of Gazans seek to rationalise the October 7 terrorist attacks as a justified response to the policies of the Israeli government.

The author is a very intelligent and accomplished woman, arriving in the United States after being born in Somali and living in Saudi Arabia, Etheopia, Kenya, Germany and the Netherlands, where she served in Parliament.  Today she works at the Hoover Institute and is associsated with the American Enterprise Institute.

Ms Ali's movement to Christianity is not of the type of a good old fashioned revival, complete with Alter Call.  Rather, it is an intellectual journay.  As a Roman Catholic, I am not bothered by that path.  The journey is not as impoortant as the goal, the end state.

further down in the esssay, Ms Ali quotes G K Chesterson:

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.”

We are a land of immigrants, of colonizers if you are an extreme Progressive.  That is our strength, and liberty to grow is our promise.  We are foturnate to have Ms Ali as one of us and I wish her well.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff