Ayaan Hirsi Ali on The cosmological argument
Hirsi Ali has not engaged directly with the cosmological argument; her conversion is motivated by civilisational rather than metaphysical concerns.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali has never been primarily a philosopher of religion, and the cosmological argument — whether in its Thomistic, Leibnizian, or Kalam formulation — has not featured prominently in her public work. During her atheist years, she would presumably have shared the standard sceptical responses: the argument proves at most a first cause, not the God of any particular religion, and the universe may require no external explanation.
Her conversion to Christianity was not prompted by cosmological reasoning but by a crisis of civilisational confidence. She came to believe that the West needs Christianity not because the cosmological argument is sound but because secular liberalism lacks the moral and spiritual resources to sustain itself against authoritarianism and nihilism.
This means her position on the cosmological argument remains largely unaddressed. She may now be more sympathetic to the idea that the universe requires an explanation beyond itself, but she has not made this argument publicly, and it would be speculative to assign her a firm position.
“I have come to realise that Russell and other thinkers were wrong to suggest that one could simply replace the religious foundation of Western civilisation with reason alone.”