Ibrahim Hooper Quotes
I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future. But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education.
Hooper, Ibrahim. Quoted in "Islamic leader says media coverage is unfair" by Michael R. Blood. Star Tribune [Minneapolis], 4 Apr. 1993, p. 4B.
The Western style of education was extremely effective for the Hindus, but was much less successful for the Muslims. The result was that over time, the Hundus achieved success in the professions, civil service, arts and sciences while the Muslims did not, thus changing the then existing parity of the two groups. For more on the difficulty that the Muslims had with British public education, see {616919} & {616925}.
The dramatic thing about this quotation is that in public, the mantra of conservatives about the courts of America is that they make and change laws as opposed to just interpreting and clarifying the laws. They traditionally accuse judges who rule against their favorite positions as using the courts as an instrument of political and social change. Here a leading conservative federal jurist, who thereafter became a member of the Supreme Court, was acknowledging and advocating the courts as instruments for conservative social, economic, and political change.
The Turkish revolution was by historical standards relatively bloodless as compared especially with other republican revolutions like the United State and France. However, the revolution that brought Ataturk to power was a relatively mild one in terms of the immediate changes that unlike many revolutions which produced instant radical change. In Turkey, the radical change took place in the years after the revolution when Ataturk with hardly any bloodshed produced compulsory public secular education, scientific elevation in society, separation of mosque and state, gender equality including universal voting, change to western dress, elimination of the caliphate, speech and press freedom, and many others including changing the entire language to use the Latin alphabet instead of Arabic. No nation in history has gone thought more social and cultural change and modernized so fast as Turkey after its revolution. The result is the most modern and successful Islamic country in the world.
This book is endorsed by major religious organizations of all faiths as well as National School Boards Association, National Education Association, National PTA, National Association of Secondary School Principals, National Association of Elementary School Principals, American Association of School Administrators and others. It is used as a guideline by most schools systems in the United States.
In the late 1830's a revolutionary political movement of small tenant farmers grew in upper New York State. There was much violence and anti-renters were hanged and jailed. After a few years they elected 14 members of the state legislature and had their fellows pardoned:
Paine was totally wrong on this count. It is true that monarchy and aristocracy were never the same as they had been, but the American and French Revolutions were catalysts for the monarchs and aristocrats to reform. In a Darwinian sense, monarchy and aristocracy evolved, and the early members would hardly recognize the modern aristocracy of Britain and other European countries that still have them and the Constitutional monarchs of today have almost evolved into a new specie.
Ibrahim Hooper (born Douglas Hooper) is the National Communications Director and spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington D.C.-based Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.
