ROGER KIMBALL: Why Atheism Is Insufficient.

In short, “Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?”

The answer that secular prophets like Bertrand Russell gave oscillated between a more or less hedonistic nihilism and the sterile liberalism of the do-gooder and social-reformer.

To a large extent, Ms. Hirsi Ali points out, “the God-hole” that secularism has bequeathed to us has been filled not by uplifting nostrums from the liberal catechism but by “a jumble of irrational quasi-religious dogma.”

The result is a society where zealous groups “prey on the dislocated masses, offering them spurious reasons for being and action—mostly by engaging in virtue-signaling theatre on behalf of a victimized minority or our supposedly doomed planet.”

The truth of the matter, as Edmund Burke saw, is that “man is by his constitution a religious animal.”

Islamism understands this. That is the secret of its mass appeal.

Christianity also has a profound grasp of this fundamental datum of human anthropology.

The ways in which they schematize that understanding are very different.

We see one alternative working itself out on the streets of London, New York, and other metropolises where the supporters of Hamas are praising Hitler and baying for Jewish blood.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali outlines a different and more accommodating possibility.

As Hirsi Ali writes, “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.“