For over a decade, Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a leading voice in the atheist movement. She spent her time with fellow atheists, like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, and she ascribed to the theory that people who practiced religion were simply afraid to face the unknown.
But amid a long struggle with depression, Ayaan heard a story about Jack Phillips, a man standing up for his faith, despite the threat of losing his business and his livelihood. She didn’t know it at the time, but his story would soon become a milestone in her journey towards a relationship with Jesus Christ.
A difficult childhood
Ayaan was born in the country of Somalia shortly after it gained independence. She was raised primarily by her grandmother, and Ayaan said her two main roles were to be chaste and obedient. Horrifyingly, Ayaan was forced to undergo genital mutilation at the age of five, keeping in line with her grandmother’s beliefs about the importance of preserving one’s virginity.
Nothing in her background would have predisposed her to believe in Jesus. Her family raised her to be a strict follower of Islam. And starting at the age of five, she was sent to a Marxist school for her education.
“I know what Marxist indoctrination is because I went to that school from the time I was five years old, six years old,” Ayaan said during a discussion at Alliance Defending Freedom Summit 2025. “We were taught to sing praises to our president…to reject our clan morality, to reject our faith, and to worship the state.”
Ayaan’s mother, who still played a role in her upbringing, eventually fled with Ayaan and her siblings to meet their father in Saudi Arabia, where he was living after escaping prison. Ayaan and her siblings were forced to live under Sharia law. Her family was then deported after 12 months, for which she said she is grateful to God.
The family then moved to Ethiopia and later Kenya, where Ayaan lived for a decade. It wasn’t until her father tried to marry her off at 22 years old that she decided to flee to the Netherlands.
Due in part to these traumatic experiences, Ayaan devoted herself to atheism. She even became known by some as the “fifth horseman” of atheism alongside Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens. But God wasn’t done writing her story.
Jack Phillips’ story sparks a faith journey
From about 2011 to 2022, Ayaan went through a period of depression. She said these struggles were very unexpected.
“I became unhappy, discontented, at a time when I’m getting married, I’m financially comfortable, I have children, I’m married to the man I love,” Ayaan said. “I was leading the sort of life you would think is what we all want…but why was I so unhappy? Why was I so depressed?”
To answer these questions, Ayaan went to the people she believed could best help her.
“I didn’t turn to God because I had turned my back on God,” Ayaan said. “I turned to science. I went to psychologists, and therapists, and psychiatrists.”
Meanwhile, Ayaan heard a story that caused her to question whether atheism was as rational and tolerant as she thought.
“I was in the East Coast somewhere, and this whole story broke about some guy who didn’t want to bake a cake and some people who were going to make him bake a cake,” Ayaan said.
As she has since come to know, that man was Jack Phillips, the Christian cake artist whom ADF defended in court for 12 years after he stood up for his beliefs about marriage by declining to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding.
“You could have a cake baked anywhere, but they wanted to have this man bake their cake,” Ayaan said. “And they were going to take him to court, and they were going to humiliate him. And to me, it was illiberal, it was intolerant, it was the very opposite of reason. It was so grotesque, I couldn’t understand it. And that was, I think for me, the first time … the seeds of doubt were sewn in my mind on why atheism is absolutely wrong.”
The impact of working for God’s kingdom
Ayaan’s conversion to Christianity was solidified when she was in a rehab center due to her struggles with depression. A woman there told Ayaan that she was “spiritually bankrupt,” and she encouraged Ayaan to write a list of qualities she would want a god of any religion she followed to have.
Before she even finished the list, Ayaan realized that the qualities she was listing were all qualities of Jesus Christ.
“And then I turn to prayer, and I go and I pray and I say, ‘If you are there, God, if you are for real, rescue me,’” Ayaan said. “‘Take me away from this black pit in which I am.’ And over a number of days, I did that, and I felt a connection.”
Ayaan’s faith journey continues to this day, and she is now speaking regularly about her growing relationship with God. She has even publicly discussed her newfound faith with her friend and former co-atheist Richard Dawkins. To say that this would be a profound change is an understatement, and in many ways, the path started when she heard about Jack Phillips.
Stories like Ayaan’s remind us that the work of God’s kingdom never stops. While the victories that ADF achieves in the courtroom are often monumental, winning souls to Christ is infinitely more impactful.
When people like Jack stand up for what they believe in, others inevitably take notice. You never know. Standing for your faith just might lead one of the world’s most well-known atheists to find Jesus.
Grant Atkinson
Former Digital Writer
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