Intelligence Squared

Decades ago, I escaped the Islamic world and came to the West. Many don’t know how good the West is, or how fragile. I fight for the restoration of what made the West great.’ – Ayaan Hirsi Ali Ever since writer and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali publicly disavowed Islam, controversy has followed her every step. For many years the Somali-born former Muslim was a fierce critic of religion – particularly Islam – and became famous worldwide after publishing her controversial bestselling autobiography 'Infidel'. In the first decade of this century she was a pioneer of the New Atheist movement alongside the so-called ‘Four Horsemen’: Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett. And then late last year Ali stunned many of her own supporters and allies when she wrote an article ‘Why I am now a Christian,’ in which she announced her conversion to Christianity and argued that the Christian belief system — not atheism — is the only means to preserve Western values. Many atheists felt that she had be