Stephen Hopgood Quotes
In a religious world, secular human rights of recent heritage and ambiguous origin increasingly compete with long-standing cultural claims legitimated by traditions and gods.
Stephen Hopgood, English Political Scientist & International Relations Scholar, “The end of human rights”, The Washington Post, January 5, 2014
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Islam is not alone. Even fundamentalist Christians and Jews are told by God in the Bible to kill blasphemers and idolaters. See {637504} for another concern with this clash.
After the WWI Turkish massacre of Armenians and the casualties of WWII, large numbers of Armenians were outside of Armenia which was a part of the Soviet Union and many ethnic Russians were moved into Armenia thus dominating the country. The ethnic Armenians found themselves a minority in their own homeland,
Gregory the Great. In the earlier years of the Roman Catholic Church it was more catholic in the sense that is looked to incorporate outside elements wherever they thought there might be benefit. The rigidity of which leaders of the Reformation would later complain had not yet set in.
His parents were assimilated Jews and he converted to Christianity.
The problem was that the British had adopted an Indian Civil Service system and instituted an educational system to train Indians. The Hindus attended the schools and did very well on the examinations. The Muslims, however, resisted the secular education, and most of their young men could not pass the examinations. See {616924} & {616925}.
This quotation illustrated the extreme polarization between the current fundamentalist Muslims, and the Muslim modernists and the West. Kamal Ataturk, the great leader and stateman who is the father of modern Turkey, is castigated by the author for leading the new Turkish parliament to depose the Caliph – the civil and religious autocrat, one of whom reigned from after the death of Muhammad till his abolishment in 1924. Most of the rest of the world credits Ataturk with being one of the great leaders of all time—one who led a democratic revolution which transformed Turkey into the only Muslim secular democracy, requiring pubic secular European type education for all children, giving women the right to vote (before the U. S. even), adopting a European alphabet and dress, and outlook on life—creating most remarkably a total cultural revolution with virtually no loss of life. No revolutionary leader, before or since has led so extensive a political and cultural revolution, and it was a bloodless revolution. Turkey, into the 21st century, was by far the most powerful, industrialized, scientific and modern nation of Muslims in the world and others were far behind. Yet many Islamic theologian still castigate Atatork for his great achievements as being against the will of God.
Stephen Hopgood (born 1965) is Professor of International Relations at the SOAS, University of London. He is also the Co-Director of the Centre for the International Politics of Conflict, Rights and Justice and Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences. His most recent book is The Endtimes of Human Rights (2013) in which he argues that declining Western power will undermine the prospects for global human rights. His 2006 book, Keepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International, is the first ethnographic account of a global human rights NGO and received the Best Book in Human Rights award from the American Political Science Association. Hopgood is currently working on an edited collection with Jack Snyder and Leslie Vinjamuri titled Human Rights Futures. From 2002-2004, he was a Social Science Research Council Fellow in Global Security and Cooperation and from 2009-2012 he held a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. Hopgood is also a regular contributor to the online discussion forum openGlobalRights.
