The Qur'an Promotes Violence Against Non-Muslims

In light of the events in Libya and the recent anniversary of 9-11, today's post is off the topic of Objectivism, so that I can alert people about the real nature of Islam, (anyone who is still in the dark, anyway.)

To be quite frank, those Muslims who believe in Western freedom and who accept other religions/philosophies as political equals, are actually the ones who compromise and don't take the Qur'an seriously. It is the violent totalitarian Islamists who are really living by the teachings of the Qur'an, as advocated in that book. The following video discusses the violent passages in the Qur'an, and the common "context defense" employed by Western Islamic advocates. It is very logical, clear and well presented.

This is another excellent video discussing the stages of jihad:

It should be noted that I do not necessarily endorse anything else the makers of the above videos advocate. I regard all religion as false or arbitrary, and fundamentally as a force for human suffering. (The reason for this is a subject for another post.)

Here is another video that corroborates some of what was said in the first two videos.

NOTE: I request that anyone commenting to criticize, or offer another interpretation, do so only after having seen at least the entirety of the first video.

The DIM Hypothesis by Dr. Leonard Peikoff

Dr. Peikoff's last work of philosophy/historical analysis,The DIM Hypothesis was released today. From the Amazon description:

With his groundbreaking and controversial DIM hypothesis, Dr. Leonard Peikoff casts a penetrating new light on the process of human thought, and thereby on Western culture and history. 

In this far-reaching study, Peikoff identifies the three methods people use to integrate concrete data into a whole, as when connecting diverse experiments by a scientific theory, or separate laws into a Constitution, or single events into a story. The first method, in which data is integrated through rational means, he calls Integration. The second, which employs non-rational means, he calls Misintegration. The third is Disintegration—which is nihilism, the desire to tear things apart. 

In The DIM Hypothesis Peikoff demonstrates the power of these three methods in shaping the West, by using the categories to examine the culturally representative fields of literature, physics, education, and politics. His analysis illustrates how the historical trends in each field have been dominated by one of these three categories, not only today but during the whole progression of Western culture from its beginning in Ancient Greece. 

Extrapolating from the historical pattern he identifies, Peikoff concludes by explaining why the lights of the West are going out—and predicts the most likely future for the United States.

Available now from Amazon:

The DIM Hypothesis: Why the Lights of the West Are Going Out

The Proper Intellectual Attitude of an Objectivist

"No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it. It is only with your own knowledge that you can deal. It is only your own knowledge that you can claim to possess or ask others to consider. Your mind is your only judge of truth—and if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal."
--John Galt in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
 
The fundamental intellectual attitude proper to an Objectivist is that of being an independent thinker first, and an Objectivist second. Any so-called Objectivist that accepts anyone as an authority over his mind is violating the philosophy of Objectivism at its root. An individual can learn concepts, methods and principles from others and obtain factual information from others, but if he is to be successful in finding truths and living happily, it is he who must judge for himself what is true and false by means of his own reasoning. He should not take anyone else's word on faith, including Ayn Rand's.
  
An individual should consider himself an Objectivist, not because he takes Ayn Rand's ideas on faith, but because he has come to an intellectual agreement with Rand through his own observation and thought. He may have learned a lot from her writings, but a part of actual, conceptual learning is thinking critically about what one is learning and comparing it to reality, thus making it one's own knowledge.
 
A student of Objectivism may suspend final judgment on the overall correctness of Rand's ideas, due to his incomplete understanding of them, while learning about her philosophy and its arguments. Learning about Objectivism is a long process, (years) so in some issues, the student may suspend final disagreements for a significant period of time, based on his understanding and agreement with major principles he has already learned from the philosophy. (1) At every point along the way, however, the student should always act on his own best judgment at the time. He should never just assume Rand was correct and act on what he thinks Objectivism advocates, when he hasn't seen a rational justification for it. If the student finds some tenet in the philosophy that, after an extended consideration of the evidence and arguments, he still would judge as incorrect, then he should make that judgment and regard Objectivism as wrong on that point. This attitude is inherent in being an independent thinker, and Objectivism wouldn't have him anyway, if he weren't (so to speak.)
 
To quote Atlas Shrugged again:
"Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you omniscience—that your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will not make you infallible—that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error."

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(1) The student in this case is not putting Ayn Rand's mind or anyone else's before his own. He is simply taking into account the full context of his knowledge, including the fact that he regards Ayn Rand as having made brilliant, sweeping integrations in philosophy. Thus, he takes extra care to understand and objectively assess her arguments before dismissing them.
 
[Edited: 5-11-12]