Why I am now a Christian - Ayaan Hirsi Ali

[ItsjustMe]

Why I am now a Christian

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.

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To understand why I became an atheist 20 years ago, you first need to understand the kind of Muslim I had been. I was a teenager when the Muslim Brotherhood penetrated my community in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1985. I don’t think I had even understood religious practice before the coming of the Brotherhood. I had endured the rituals of ablutions, prayers and fasting as tedious and pointless.

[Warpy]

1. Too late for me to cope with the video, maye tomorrow

but your excerpt mentioned the us vs. them, good (Christian) vs. evil (Islam) without historical context that goes back more than a few decades feel good dichotomy plus liking the various rituals. Those seem both ignorant and shallow to me, but he's certainly entitled to follow whatever idiocy he wants to as long as he leaves me out of it.

I suppose he "became" a Christian for the same basic reason he "became" an atheist in the past: it was fashionable.

FWIW, I didn't "become" an atheist. I just started to admit what I always was, the religious bullying of my childhood not having taken. In my own case, it was distinctly unfashionable, another disqualification for being the sweet flower of southern womanhood.

[multigraincracker]

2. I'm a Secular Humanist.

I look at it in terms of locus of control. My view is that “shit happens”. Every thing is pretty much random. What matters is how I deal with the hand I am dealt. Those that see everything as run by some outside force pray for shit to not happen, as if there nothing they can do about it.
But this is just one way to look at the world. There are some “religions” that kind of follow this train of thought. Ethical Culture and Ethical Society are a few that I find interesting. Some of these act, in some ways, like a religion. They have buildings and services, much like churches do. But, you can’t call them believers of gods.
I never look for arguments, but I love to ask them legitimate guestions that they may, or may not find uncomfortable.
There are Secular Jews and some Secular Muslims, or at lest those that keep an open mind and would never fight each other. I think these are very hard times for those folks.
But, that’s just me.