Joe Bob Parties With the Atheists

By Joe Bob Briggs

The biggest security guard I've ever seen in my life–this guy could work for Blackwater, and he's got the coiled listening device spilling out of his left ear to prove it–has parked his burly self squarely in front of me, making it clear that I'd best slink back against the wall while the Rock Star of Atheism makes her entrance and a hundred entranced admirers take a collective breath, not quite believing they're in her presence.

The exotically beautiful Ayaan Hirsi Ali travels with not one but two Blackwater types, part of a security contract supplied by the government of the Netherlands at the rate of two-point-five mill a year, and she's clearly the main attraction at the opening-night fundraiser for the Atheist Alliance International, an umbrella group of 59 atheist organizations in 10 countries that have all come together in a spooky section of Arlington, Virginia, called Crystal City, which looks like some Nordic vision of the perfectly planned society–hermetically sealed high-rise apartment buildings, underground shopping malls, and claustrophobic hotels, with streets devoid of pedestrians but elaborately landscaped, like a Brobdingnagian potted plant.

We're all wedged into the Arlington Ballroom of the Crowne Plaza Hotel at an event that's been sold out for weeks, with hundreds more tuning in on the Internet, and we've been warned not to pet the bomb-sniffing dogs. The heavy security is specifically the result of a fatwa declaring open season on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but there's a little paranoia even when she's not around, perhaps because any well-placed explosive device in this low-ceilinged meeting hall could wipe out the entire sanhedrin of the atheist movement, and, after all, you never know what those abortion clinic bombers are likely to do next. Besides Ali, the assembled pantheon includes Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation), Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great) and Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell), which, if you've been paying attention, collectively amount to about 2 million New York Times best-selling copies during the past year with variations on the themes of "There is no God," "Belief in God is a plague on society," and "The religionists must be stopped." So I guess there's one other reason we need security: Any attack on the building would result in an extremely low afterlife quotient–we have to party now!

At last Ayaan Hirsi Ali makes her entrance–she's actually kind of bashful, so she sidles awkwardly toward her assigned table as Burly Two bumps off dawdlers like a human mine-sweeper, clearing a path through the cocktail jungle–and as her presence slowly dawns on people (there she is! she's so slender! don't pet the dog!), there's a little wave of spontaneous applause and then a jostling for position for what will be a solid hour of effusive outpourings ("Thank you for your courage," "I admire you so much," "My family is Muslim and you give me strength"), mostly from women, many of them clutching Ali's book Infidel, the story of her odyssey from Somalia to Saudi Arabia to Ethiopia to Kenya to the Netherlands as she evaded an arranged marriage, denounced the religion of her family, became a member of the Dutch Parliament, and made a film on the oppression of Muslim women with director Theo Van Gogh, who was knifed to death by an Islamic fanatic as a result. I notice a man in line who looks remarkably like Tom Wolfe–only to realize it is Tom Wolfe. He chats with her for about five minutes, and she looks alternately embarrassed and joyful. On this night, it's good to be an atheist in Crystal City.

- more -