Interesting. Some people find it paywalled, and others don’t. Here’s the text:
As an 18-year-old Muslim missionary, I enrolled at University College London intent on destroying the theory of evolution. Today, I host a global television miniseries about it.
I arrived on a mission: I wanted to prove that Charles Darwin was wrong. Like so many other creationists, I believed scientists were either lying to us or they were so biased that they were unknowingly refusing to read the data accurately. The only way to dismantle their theory was to inspect the data for myself and prove it wrong.
Two decades later, I am an evolutionary biologist. Working on a documentary about our species’ 300,000-year story made me reflect on my own evolution — and how, when you ask people to do something simple such as “believe the science,” you might actually be asking them to pay an almost unimaginable price.
The moment I finally admitted that evolution was real didn’t feel liberating. It felt like grief. I had spent years running up against hard evidence that, despite my best efforts, I simply couldn’t refute. I was in the shower, and I cried inconsolably. Accepting evolution meant more than just accepting a scientific theory. It meant leaving my community, almost every friend I had ever known, and was the final nail in the coffin of my arranged marriage.
Those tears were a response forged in the Paleolithic era. We are not meant to find it easy to leave our tribe because, back when caves were prime real estate, leaving your tribe was a death sentence. My anguish was biologically ingrained over hundreds of thousands of years. That ancient biology explains why so many people still reject “the science.”
Among the six other human species we shared the planet with 300,000 years ago, we Homo sapiens were probably the most cooperative. It is a huge component of our success. Ironically, tribalism encourages cooperation: These are my people; they help keep me alive, so we work together and help one another.
Tribalism is great for the in-group, but it isn’t so great for the out-group. The social bonding hormone oxytocin doesn’t just encourage hugs — it strengthens in-group bias at the expense of the out-group. I have described the hormone oxytocin as something like a cuddly but slightly prejudiced grandma. Back in the Paleolithic, it gave us an early form of “stranger danger.”
By and large, we share the opinions of our tribe. So when we ask people to believe in climate modeling or vaccine science, what we are really asking people to do is choose between their community’s beliefs and an abstract dataset. It’s a direct referendum on the people they know and love. Most people will not betray their tribe for a stranger in a lab coat.
In biological terms, this is an extremely rational predisposition — or, put another way, it’s human nature. And it’s the main reason simply shouting “trust the science” will never truly change people’s minds.
By the age of 13, I was deeply involved in dawah, Muslim missionary work. I organized study circles, talks and youth activities across Britain. It informed everything about me, including the company I kept, and it gave me a purpose: to help build communities that could aid Muslims navigating life in a secular country.
After I left my missionary world, I was traumatized. It fractured my sense of self. You have to confront that your assumptions about everything around you might be wrong. And you have to learn how to belong in an entirely different context.
I approached entering secular society like anthropological fieldwork. Secular London was my “exotic” tribe. I studied the behaviors and norms of my friends, roommates, TV characters and perfect strangers like someone desperate to belong. I curated my personality like I curated my wardrobe.
I took my headscarf off after 19 years. Suddenly, my knowing smiles to other Muslim women in hijabs meant less to them. But the change in the way that non-Muslims treated me made me realize how anxious my headscarf had made others all those years, how much it made them other-ize me.
I also had to learn how to interact with men. I went from an arranged marriage to Tinder. The first time I was ghosted by a date, I wondered if the man was worried that his behavior would bring shame upon his family.
In many ways, I traded a warm religious community for a cold and often selfish secular world. If my siblings, who were practicing Muslims but never a part of my missionary world, hadn’t decided to stick by me and love me, I am not sure I would be here. Such is the anguish and torment of leaving one’s tribe.
Understanding these dynamics can illuminate the current quagmire of science and politics. When people of faith and political conservatives see their views mocked, dismissed or ostracized, they begin to see science not as a method but as a tribe they’re not a part of. And once science becomes just another tribe, its authority collapses.
I kept my complicated background a secret for years, partly because I was scared that my transformation would be used to mock religious communities. But when I finally spoke publicly about my past this summer, I was struck by something: In the 13 years since I left my missionary world, many Muslims have embraced evolution. That progress didn’t come from outsiders or even nonpracticing Muslims like me; it came from scholars, thinkers and activists who argued for the compatibility of Islam and evolution. It is why we must tolerate religious and, for that matter, right-wing viewpoints more. Not only is more robust science achieved when all biases are represented, but the perception of left-wing atheists having a monopoly on science is a disaster. The best ambassadors to skeptical communities are people from within those communities.
Too often, people debate skeptics as if facts alone will convince them. But data is not more important than other factors. You can’t overturn a worldview in one sitting, nor should you want to. In these conversations, I often find myself going beyond the science — wanting to talk about their life and mine. In 30 minutes, I can’t debate someone into believing the science, but I can show them a scientist who isn’t a shill, and they can show me a skeptic who has reasons for their doubt. I also point to people from within their community who accept the science. I explain that scientists are highly incentivized to overturn established theory. If I had disproved evolution, I would have undoubtedly won a Nobel Prize.
Evolution is the underlying assumption of biology; nothing in the field makes sense without it. It should trouble us that so many people still reject it. But paradigm shifts are possible, although parting with the beliefs of one’s tribe is an enormous decision. Empathy for that hesitation, not scorn for it, is the way forward.
I sometimes joke that I am the personification of “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” But what I really want is to be proof that if we allow science to become just another tribe, we will be asking people to choose between their loved ones and abstract principles. However that ends, it won’t end well.