From Islam to America

by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  My second observation is that most Muslims do not know the content of the Quran or the Hadith or any other Islamic scripture. The much-quoted edict promoting freedom of religion is indeed in the Quran, but its authority is nullified by verses that descended upon the Prophet later, when he was better armed and when his following had grown to great numbers.

  The Muslims who say that Allah is peaceful and compassionate simply do not know about other concepts of God, or the concepts they do have are wrong. They have been told that Christians have misunderstood the real God, Allah, that they are guilty of shirk (an unforgivable sin) by associating the one true God with the Holy Ghost and Jesus, a mere prophet, they argue, whom Christians wrongly put on the throne as the son of God.

  The Muslims who hear all this (and worse) about Christianity hardly ever make an attempt to find out more. Meanwhile Christians have stopped teaching people in Muslim countries because the bitter resistance from the local Muslim clergy and political elites made it harder and harder to do so. In short, the Muslim masses are insulated from all alternative religions.

  To change this, I have in mind a kind of spiritual competition. This was my question for Father Bodar in Rome: If Saudi Arabia invests millions of dollars in madrassas and a systematic campaign of dawa, taking advantage of all the institutions of freedom in the West, why should the Catholic Church, with its financial resources and its millions of steadfast followers, not do the same?

  I hope my friends Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens—the esteemed trinity of atheist activists in Britain and the United States—will not be dismayed by the idea of a strategic alliance between secular people and Christians, including the Roman Catholic Church. I concede that the idea is a little paradoxical. For centuries the proponents of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment saw the Vatican as their archenemy. The Church persecuted and in some cases executed those it condemned as heretics. My atheist friends are right to point out that many Christians have abandoned biblical literalism only because of the constant criticism by such freethinkers. It is also true that there is no shortage of misogyny in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Contempt for women is inscribed in the works of Saint Paul.

  But the modern Catholic Church is a very different and more tolerant institution. Christians in more recent times must be given some credit for heeding a least some of the critiques advanced by the thinkers of the Enlightenment. That very openness to criticism is what makes Christianity different from Islam.

  Nor is Christianity riven as it used to be by bitter sectarian conflicts dating back to the Reformation. Today the relationship between the Catholic Church and the mainstream Protestant denominations, the Anglicans and Episcopalians, the Presbyterians, Unitarians, and Universalists, is peaceful. In most of the Western world these churches and their congregations either leave one another alone or have good ecumenical relations. Finally, the Christian churches have put behind them the centuries of anti-Semitism that so stained their reputation.

  It is true that on a wide range of issues the Roman Catholic Church takes positions with which I, along with most liberals, disagree. On questions such as abortion, birth control, and women priests there are deep divisions within the Western world. Many American Protestants as well as Catholics are deeply opposed to abortion, a polarizing issue particularly in the United States. But all these differences are matters of debate and not matters of war. Debate, however bitter, takes place within Western societies in a peaceful if sometimes heated exchange of words. The occasional madman who blows up an abortion clinic or murders physicians who provide legal treatments to women whose pregnancies are unwanted is the exception that proves the rule.

  The clash between Islam and the West is different. All possible means are used by the agents of radical Islam to defeat the West. Even though most of our attention is consumed by those Muslims who are willing to blow themselves up in the name of their religion, we cannot ignore the more subtle campaign of conversion and radicalization. For too long the West has sat back and allowed Islam to make a run at people who are susceptible to conversion. Sometimes I feel as if the only people in the West who really get this are Jews, who are far more exposed to the workings of radical Islam because of their contacts with the state of Israel.

  Take a look at the institutions of the Enlightenment, the schools and universities established throughout the Western world on secular principles. To defend the values of the Enlightenment from the encroachment of Islamist thought they must wake up and see how effectively they have been infiltrated. Their resources are limited, and large donations from Saudi princes and Qatari sultans come with strings attached. Their curricula are increasingly politicized, and they tolerate and even encourage the rise of all kinds of anti-Enlightenment movements based on feelings of group grievance and victimhood. Some teachers even encourage their classes to wallow in self-flagellation over the misdeeds of Western history. Eastern, Middle Eastern, and African cultures that see compromise and conciliation as manifestations of weakness interpret all this as a sign of their own impending victory: it emboldens them.

  In this clash of civilizations the West needs to criticize the cultures of men of color too. We need to drop the ethos of relativist respect for non-Western religions and cultures if respect is simply a euphemism for appeasement. But we need to do more than criticize. We need—urgently—to offer an alternative message that is superior to the message of submission.

  When I’m told to be careful not to impose Western values on people who don’t want them, I beg to differ. I was not born in the West and I did not grow up in the West. But the delight of being able once I came to the West to let my imagination run free, the pleasure of choosing whom I want to associate with, the joy of reading what I want, and the thrill of being in control of my life—in short, my freedom—is something I feel intensely as I manage to extricate myself from all the shackles and obstacles that my bloodline and my religion imposed.

  I am not the only one who feels and thinks this.

  The multiculturalism and relativism so rampant in Western institutions of learning remind me of my aunt Khadija’s imposing and beautiful polished antique cabinet in Mogadishu. One day, when she moved the huge wooden cupboard to clean behind it, the whole thing came down with a shocking crash. An infinite army of termites had ensconced themselves in the rear of the cabinet and had slowly, inch by inch, eaten almost the whole thing. No one had suspected it, and now only the exterior skeleton of the frame was left.

  I want nothing more than that pro-Enlightenment, free-thinking atheists should spontaneously organize themselves to combat the comparable gnawing threat of radical Islam. But the likelihood of such an organization attracting significant support seems remote because the children of the Enlightenment are hopelessly fragmented in their views about how to deal with Islam. Many contemporary Western thinkers have unconsciously imbibed the toxin of appeasement with the ideas of equality and free speech. They give chairs in the most distinguished and best institutions of higher learning to apologists for Islam. There is no unity, no shared view of how to deal with this threat. Indeed, those of us who clearly see the threat are dismissed as alarmists.

  That is why I think we must also appeal to other, more traditional sources of ideological strength in Western society. And that must include the Christian churches. There are people in Europe and America who maintain that it is secularism that has made us defenseless against a Muslim onslaught. But it is not only leftists who appease Islam. Afflicted with similar pangs of white guilt, many prominent Christian theologians have also become accomplices of jihad.

  When I came to the West what I found truly amazing was the fact that believers, agnostics, and unbelievers could debate with and even ridicule one another without ever resorting to violence. It is this right of free expression that is now under attack. And in time of war, internal feuding in the ranks—between atheists and agnostics, Christians and Jews, Protestants and Catholics—serves only to weaken the West. So lo
ng as we atheists and classical liberals have no effective programs of our own to defeat the spread of radical Islam, we should work with enlightened Christians who are willing to devise some. We should bury the hatchet, rearrange our priorities, and fight together against a much more dangerous common enemy.

  Given the choice, I would by far rather live in a Christian than a Muslim country. Christianity in the West today is more humane, more restrained, and more accepting of criticism and debate. The Christian concept of God today is more benign, more tolerant of dissent. But the most important difference between the two civilizations is the exit option. A person who chooses to opt out of Christianity may be excommunicated from the Church community, but he is not harmed; his destiny is left to God. Muslims, however, impose Allah’s rules on each other. Apostates—people, like me, who leave the faith—are supposed to be killed.

  Christians too killed blasphemers and heretics, but that was long ago, during the dark days of the Inquisition. On September 12, 2006, at the University of Regensburg, Germany, where he had once taught theology as a professor, Pope Benedict gave a wide-ranging lecture, titled “Faith, Reason, and the University—Memories and Reflections.” In it he proclaimed that any faith in God must also obey reason; God cannot ask you to do something unreasonable, because God created reason. Islam, he pointed out, is not like Catholicism: it is predicated on the idea that God may overturn law and human reason. Allah may demand immoral or unreasonable behavior, for he is all-powerful and demands absolute submission.

  In spite of the pope’s invitation to dialogue with people in other cultures, his speech unleashed Muslim protests around the world, and several churches were fire-bombed: more evidence of the intolerance of criticism of Islam by Islamists. This speech was still very much present in everyone’s mind during my visit to Rome eight months later. Indeed, Father Bodar and I discussed it.

  Pope Benedict XVI, the Vicar of Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church and Servant of the Servants of God, heads the world’s strongest system of religious hierarchy. No other spiritual authority can claim to control such a well-structured network. I’m sure that his pyramid of priests, bishops, and cardinals has kept him fully aware that another spiritual potentate, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, feudal ruler of Saudi Arabia and Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, has for years been investing in dawa, in unifying peoples of different languages and geographies into a powerful body called the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a formidable and wealthy body that has transformed the United Nations Human Rights Commission into a sad comedy, organized the Muslim boycott of Danish companies after the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, and sought to influence the domestic policies of several European nations. Members of the OIC, for instance, mounted a well-organized campaign of global condemnation against Switzerland when a majority of voters supported a ban on the building of minarets on Swiss soil. However, members of the nations of the OIC pay only lip service to protect Christians living in their own countries from persecution.

  The pope also knows that wherever radical Islamists become a majority they oppress other faiths. In Muslim countries there is no equal competition for souls, hearts, and minds, because atheists and missionaries and communities of Christians are forced to operate in an atmosphere of physical menace. And although there are plenty of mosques in Rome, not a single church is permitted in Riyadh.

  Imagine if the pope were to organize some fifty nations as the “Organization of the Christian Conference.” They could dispatch deputations of ambassadors every time construction of a church was banned in a Muslim country. Where the OIC seeks Islamic dominance and the erosion of human rights, an OCC would aim for the defense of Western civilization and the advancement of human rights.

  A confrontation between the values held by Islam and those of the West is inevitable. There is already a clash, and we are in some sense already at war. That Western civilization is superior is not simply my opinion but a reality I have experienced and continue to appreciate every day. I assume that the West will win. The question is how.

  Can the various churches of Christianity help stem this rising tide of violent Islam? Can today’s Christianity play a role in preserving the values of Western civilization? Can the Vatican join in this campaign, if not lead the way—or is it doomed to become a decorative relic, like the European royal families and the fish fork? Can the Established Churches of Europe heed my call—or will the cultural and moral relativists prevail, Christian leaders like the Archbishop of Canterbury, who professes to have an “understanding” attitude toward Shari’a?

  * * *

  Globalization is not just an economic process, moving jobs to countries that have cheap labor, bringing goods to countries with money. It’s also about people. The commercial unification of the world during the West’s long boom following World War II brought millions of people from historically Muslim countries to live in Europe with extraordinary speed, far quicker than the process of establishing Christianity in Europe’s colonies or the march of Muslim armies from the Arabian Peninsula to the heart of Europe in the century that followed the death of the Prophet. These millions of modern Muslims brought their medieval social mores with them.

  At first they were guest workers who intended to work in Europe only temporarily. They left their families in the distant villages of Berber Morocco or Anatolian Turkey. Their belief in Islam was mostly like my grandmother’s, a diluted, superstitious tradition, more a set of cultural rituals than a rulebook, and they had few mosques in Europe to sustain or harden their observance of the faith. Many of them drank alcohol and adopted other Western habits, and only intermittently observed such Muslim rules as praying five times a day.

  But in the 1980s Islam was resurgent again following the siege of Mecca and the revolution in Iran, and many families began arriving in European neighborhoods such as Whitechapel and Amsterdam-West. They congregated in geographically separate communities. And, particularly when there was no colonial history with their host country (and thus no common language), as those communities grew larger they kept more and more to themselves. They shopped at their own shops and watched television from Turkey or Morocco by satellite. And then the imams arrived.

  Just as European governments and other civil society groups underestimated the intentions of the radical expansionist agents of Islam, the churches, both Catholic and Protestant, neglected to offer the new Muslim immigrants the spiritual guidance they sought. To be sure, many Christian volunteer aid workers offered immigrant communities neutral and pragmatic advice along with social assistance. Islamic charity is conditional on your beliefs; these Christians were ecumenical to the point of making no attempt to convert those they sought to help. Ecumenism for most Christians is a measure of progress, allowing a choice of faiths and forms of worship while establishing peaceful relations between them. Islam is quite different. It was started by a warrior who conquered faster than he could think through a theology or political theory. Islam since his death has been plagued by a crisis of authority, leaving an everlasting vacuum of power that, throughout the history of Islam, has been filled by men who seize power by force. The concepts of jihad, martyrdom, and a life that begins only after death are never challenged. The Christian leaders now wasting precious time and resources on a futile exercise of interfaith dialogue with the self-appointed leaders of Islam should redirect their efforts to converting as many Muslims as possible to Christianity, introducing them to a God who rejects Holy War and who has sent his son to die for all sinners out of love for mankind.

  Perhaps if volunteers had more actively preached to these early immigrants and actively sought to convert them to Christianity, the tragedy of the unassimilable Muslim might have been avoided. Converts to Christianity would have recognized the radicals when they arrived and resisted the siren song of jihad.

  By the 1990s, however, radical Muslim preachers were going door to door in the tower blocks of
Leeds and Lille and Limburg. Indeed, in some of those cities—historically the heartland of Christianity—it seemed easier to find Allah than the Christian God. Despite the enormous potential for assimilation offered by a European urban environment—free schooling of a quality that was certainly much better than that in most immigrants’ home communities, free health care, plentiful consumer goods and trinkets, and a powerful cult of material well-being—startling numbers of European-born children began turning toward the Saudi-trained imams and their extremist revival of Islam.

  This is a tragic story of countless missed opportunities. How is it possible that a man who has grown up in Scotland and has trained there to become a doctor could become so devoted to a violent interpretation of Islam as to want to blow himself up at an airport along with countless women and children? How could this happen, after so much potential acculturation, so much potential contact with the values of tolerance, secular humanism, and individual rights?

  Part of the answer is that out of a misplaced respect for the immigrants’ culture, no real, concerted attempt has been made to shift their traditional ways of mind. Despite high rates of crime and unemployment and low rates of success in schools—all indicators of a failure to integrate large numbers of Muslim immigrants into European society—there has not been a deliberate drive to urge immigrants to adopt Western values. The other part of the answer is the willful denial by Westerners that there is a clash of values between the West and the rest, and particularly between Islam and the West.

  For decades European leaders, including Christian leaders, neglected to bring the newcomers into their fold. They unthinkingly supposed that the buffet of material pleasure and individual freedoms on offer in European cities would be sufficient to lure immigrants from Muslim countries into adopting modern lifestyles. They assumed that, along with pop music, denim jeans, and the legal right to have sex at age sixteen, the values of individual rights and individual choice, intellectual freedom, and tolerance would entice Muslims into accepting modernity in every sense. Christian leaders assumed the passive position that people will be attracted to the church on their own and that the church had no business trying to persuade them of the superiority of the Christian God.