A female Hamas suicide bomber poses with the Qur’an before detonating herself and killing four Israelis.
In the wake of each flare-up in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, people inevitably argue over the same question: “Who owns the territory that currently comprises Israel: the Arab Palestinians, or the Jews?” Then long debates ensue about the history of the two different groups in the region, who was there first, which group was the aggressor, which group has rightful title, etc.
But the Objectivist answer to the question of which ethnic group has the right to the land is: Neither. Land cannot belong to ethnic groups, social classes, or other categories of people, in any sense.
In The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand wrote:
A group, as such, has no rights. A man can neither acquire new rights by joining a group nor lose the rights which he does possess. The principle of individual rights is the only moral base of all groups or associations.
The reason that rights are individual is that the human mind is individual, the process of thought is individual, and human life is fundamentally individual. (For more on this, see: QuickPoint 1: Thinking is Individual.) Rights are the moral-political principles that protect individual human life and freedom of thought and action from the coercive depredations of other humans. (See Ayn Rand’s essays from The Virtue of Selfishness here: “Man’s Rights/The Nature of Government.”)
Land can only be owned by individuals, or by groups that are definite sets of individuals in a clear contractual arrangement, (such as a corporation.) Vague conglomerations of people have no singular identity and no collective mind, and thus cannot have rights to anything, as such.
Here is a sampling of audio, video and articles about the history of the Israeli/Palestinian-Muslim conflict and the current war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel:
An audio interview with Dr. Efraim Karsh, professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King’s College London on “The Arab-Israel Conflict and the Palestinian Refugees”:
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 and the Quran, (anyone who is still in the dark, anyway. “Quran” is also sometimes spelled “Qur’an” or “Koran.”)
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 Quran seriously. It is the violent totalitarian Islamists who are really living by the teachings of the Quran, as advocated in that book.
The following video discusses the violent passages in the Quran, 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.
At its core, Islam is a totalitarian, militant, expansionist ideology. It is engineered to achieve irreversible growth. Jihad (striving for the triumph of Islam in the world) is a religious duty of all Muslims. (Quran 66:9, 9:41, Tafsir Ibn Kathir 216, 217) The “holy strategy” of Jihad was modeled for all Muslims by Muhammad: it starts with taqiyya (deception of unbelievers) and culminates in wars of aggression by Muslims to conquer non-Muslims. The Islamic government then imposes “divine” Sharia law on everyone under its jurisdiction, ensuring a privileged place for Islam, and treating non-Muslims as second-class citizens. (It is illegal to publicly practice religions other than Islam in Saudi Arabia: churches and synagogues are banned.)
Under Sharia, the penalty for leaving Islam (apostasy) is death.
Again, Islam is engineered to expand. The radical Islamic terrorists of the world will not stop their war if the US pulls out of the Middle East completely. The radical Muslims of the world (of which there are many millions) will just be emboldened to take over larger and larger territories, with their terrorist wings looking for opportune times to attack Western countries. They will search for any excuse to become outraged and carry out “reprisals”: excuses like cartoons mocking Muhammad, or criticism of Islam, or failure of governments to uphold Sharia legal standards/punishments for Muslims or those they interact with. (For evidence, observe the behavior, statements, and self-imposed “victimhood” of the Palestinians and Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza.)
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.
[Edited: 6-26-16: Expanded post to include significant text and links after videos.
3-14-17: Altered spelling of “Qur’an” to “Quran.”]
Objectivism In Depth 