There are 2 entries for this date: Robert Louis Stevenson and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

On this date in 1850, poet and novelist Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Probably suffering from lifelong tuberculosis, Robert, as a frail, often bed-ridden child, let his imagination soar. Stevenson's classic A Child's Garden of Verses perfectly evokes childhood. Stevenson studied law, took the bar in 1875, but never practiced due to ill health. His early rejection of Christianity created a schism with his father, a fanatical Scots Presbyterian, who raged at his son, the "orrible atheist," as Stevenson wrote his friend Charles Baxter (cited in Who's Who in Hell by Warren Allen Smith). Escaping to London, Stevenson began contributing to leading magazines. He also traveled despite frail health. A walking trip in France produced Travels with a Donkey in Cervenne (1878). His first novel, An Island Voyage (1878), was followed by Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Kidnapped. Stevenson specialized in adventure and often dipped into the macabre, explaining: "But we are so fond of life that we have no leisure to entertain the terror of death. It is a honeymoon with us all through, and none of the longest. Small blame to us if we give our whole hearts to this glowing bride of ours, to the appetites, to honour, to the hungry curiosity of the mind, to the pleasure of the eyes in nature, and the pride of our own nimble bodies" ("Aes Triplex").

In search of a healthful climate, Stevenson, who married in 1880, sailed to Samoa in 1888 with his widowed mother as part of the entourage. Daily prayers were conducted at his house there, apparently at the request of his mother. Two biographers concluded that Stevenson, while not wishing to affiliate with rationalist groups, was an agnostic. Biographer F. Watt (R.L.S., 1913) wrote that Stevenson "was destitute of fixed creed or belief, and that he is properly described as an Agnostic." In The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, published in 1994, a love letter included a touching line: "I believe in you as others believe in the Bible" (cited in Who's Who in Hell). Stevenson died of a brain hemorrhage in Samoa. Although his family erected a tomb with some religious references, one side carries a bronze plaque with Stevenson's lovely and secular poem, "Requiem": "Under the wide and starry sky/ Dig the grave and let me lie./ Glad did I live and gladly die,/ And I laid me down with a will./ This be the verse you 'grave for me:/ Here he lies where he long'd to be;/ Home is the sailor, home from the sea,/ And the hunter home from the hill." D. 1894.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

On this date in 1969, passionate critic of religion, author and politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia. Her family moved often during her childhood, seeking political asylum because her father, Hirsi Magan Isse, a Somali scholar and politician, was a revolutionary opposition leader. Raised as a devout Muslim, young Ayaan endured a traumatic genital mutilation when she was about five years old. Her grandmother had secretly arranged the religious rite to take place while her parents were out of town. In her early twenties, Ayaan was informed by her father that a marriage to a cousin in Canada had been arranged, and that she had no choice in the matter. Dramatically fleeing the marriage and seeking political asylum in Europe, Ali went to the Netherlands in 1992. There she earned a master's degree in political science and became a fellow at the Wiardi Beckman Foundation. She was first elected to the Dutch Parliament in 2003, as a representative of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy. A prominent critic of Islam, Ali spoke out publicly against the abuses of women under Islam. She was also active in seeking to reform Netherlands' handling of asylum seekers. Ali became a well-known in the Netherlands, making many TV and debate appearances, and writing numerous articles and two controversial books: The Son Factory: About Women, Islam and Integration (2002), and The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam (2003-2004). In 2005, Ali was awarded the Democracy Prize of the Swedish Liberal People's Party "for her courageous work for democracy, human rights and women's rights." She was named by Time magazine in 2005 as "one of the 100 most influential people in the world."

Exposed to western culture and values through her readings of literature, history and philosophy, including The Atheist Manifesto by Herman Philipse, Ali moved from Islam to atheism. Ali considered herself a Muslim until May 28, 2002, when she said she became an atheist while sitting in an Italian restaurant drinking a glass of wine: ". . . I asked myself: Why should I burn in hell just because I'm drinking this? But what prompted me even more was the fact that the killers of 9/11 all believed in the same God I believed in" (Interview, Swiss magazine "Das Magazin," September 2006). Ali penned the script for the film "Submission," which criticized the treatment of women in Islamic society, bringing her to international notice. Two months after the film's release in 2004, the film's producer, Theo van Gogh (great-grandnephew of Vincent van Gogh), was viciously murdered as he bicycled in Amsterdam by a Moroccan member of a Dutch Islamist terrorist. The assailant, who was later convicted, had pinned a death threat to Ali on van Gogh's body. Ali, who was already receiving security from the Dutch government, was forced to go into hiding. After some political concerns arose, she resigned from the Dutch parliament and moved to the United States, working for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative political think tank. Ali's moving and critically-acclaimed autobiography, Infidel, was published in English in 2007.

(Compiled by Jane Esbensen)