Controversial activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali became well known when she published her 2007 memoir Infidel, which was an account of her life as a Muslim woman and her fight against radical Islam. She made headlines worldwide when she converted to atheism, receiving numerous death threats. In November 2023, she announced her conversion to Christianity. Her reasons address in part what is happening in the world today. She writes:

Atheists were wrong when they said rejection of God would usher in a new age of reason and intelligent humanism. But 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. This is mostly by engaging in virtue-signaling theater on behalf of a victimized 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.'

In this nihilistic vacuum, the challenge before us becomes civilizational. 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 civilization 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 mobilize the Muslim masses. Unless we offer something as meaningful, I fear the erosion of our civilization will continue. And fortunately, there is no need to look for some New Age concoction of medication and mindfulness. Christianity has it all.