Few stories capture the stakes of faith in the modern world more vividly than Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s. Born in Somalia, she survived female genital mutilation, fled a forced marriage, rose to serve as a member of the Dutch parliament, survived assassination threats following the murder of her collaborator Theo van Gogh, and spent decades as a globally recognized critic of religion.

And then, in 2023, Ayaan Hirsi Ali—one of the most famous atheists in the world—became a Christian.

Her conversion was not a quiet, private affair. It announced itself as a reckoning—with the limits of secular reason, with the question of what holds civilization together, and with the deeper hungers that neither Islam nor atheism had been able to satisfy. Hirsi Ali’s journey is the subject of her forthcoming book, Why I Am Now a Christian, and it is this journey—personal, intellectual, and civilizational—that she will share with us as our 2026 Ian Shugart Lecturer.

What makes Hirsi Ali’s voice singular is that her case for Christianity does not begin in theology or philosophy. It emerges from a life that led her unexpectedly to Christ: from the mosque, to parliament, through exile and grief, and into the slow discovery that the secular tools of the West—military, diplomatic, technological—cannot answer the question that undergirds them all: What is it that unites us? For Hirsi Ali, the answer lies in the Judeo-Christian inheritance that gave rise to free conscience, the rule of law, and the dignity of the person. It is a conviction forged by a lifetime of struggle and suffering.

In conversation with Brian Dijkema—Cardus’s President, Canada—Hirsi Ali will speak about what drew her to the Christian faith, how her conversion has shaped her understanding of the civilizational challenges now facing the West, and what it means to live—as Ian Shugart himself did—with convictions that are at once deeply personal and publicly consequential. In a moment when many formerly secular people are searching for cultural renewal, and returning to religion as the moral and cultural wellspring of Western civilization, Hirsi Ali will show us why Christianity cannot simply be a civilizational project—before all else, it is an encounter with a person who fulfills the needs of every human heart. That encounter reshapes us entirely, and it is only from the divine gifts of this relationship—mercy, forgiveness, and love—that a civilization worth building is born.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Founder of AHA  Foundation, is a women’s rights activist,  champion of free speech, and best-selling author. She is also known as someone who speaks truth to power.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and founder of the AHA Foundation. Prior to joining the Hoover Institution, she was a Fellow at the Belfer Center’s Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard University, and a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.

Ayaan’s journey began in Somalia in 1969 where, as a young girl, she was subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM). From very early on, she questioned the subjugation of women she saw all around her; while listening to a sermon on the many ways women should be obedient to their husbands, she couldn’t resist asking, “Must our husbands obey us too?”

Ayaan’s path led her many places, but upon being forced by her father to marry a distant cousin, she fled to Holland and claimed political asylum. Once there, she worked her way up from being a janitor to serving as an elected member of the Dutch parliament. As a member of parliament, she campaigned to raise awareness of violence against women, including honor killings and FGM, practices that had followed her fellow immigrants into Holland.

In 2004, Ayaan gained international attention following the murder of Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh had directed her short film, Submission, a film about the oppression of women under Islam. The assassin left a death threat for her pinned to Van Gogh’s chest. This tragic event, and Ayaan’s life leading up to it, are all chronicled in her best-selling book, Infidel.

Ayaan has shown great courage, risking her life to expose the violence she sees around her. But she has done more than speak out. Ayaan has connected her life experiences, and the attention she garnered, to the AHA Foundation. She took action to protect women and girls from the violence she—and so many others—faced.

She has written several books including Infidel (2007), Nomad: from Islam to America, a Personal Journey through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now (2015) and The Challenge of Dawa (2017) and Prey, published by Harper Collins in 2021. Ayaan also started the Restoring the West Substack in 2026.

She received her Master’s degree in Political Science from Leiden University in the Netherlands.