Imperialist Wars and Liberal Peace

Abstract

TheAssociation ofMuslim Social Scientists of NorthAmerica (AMSS) held its fourth annual Canadian Regional Conference in Toronto at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) on 1 November 2008. This event, whichwas cosponsored by the Department ofAdult Education and Counseling Psychology (OISE) and the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto, was coordinated by Jasmin Zine (Wilfrid Laurier) and Maliha Chishti (OISE). The keynote address was presented by Ann Russo (DePaul University). The theme of this year’s conference, “Imperialist Wars and Liberal Peace,” brought together a group of scholars to critically engage the nature of the new imperialist wars that are being waged on a smaller scale. From the “war on terror” to the various forms of intra-state warfare, participants sought to address how a viable peace and prosperity can be achieved for a majority of the world’s people, rather than just for an elite minority. During the morning plenary session, “Imperialist ‘Obsession’ with Hate: A Critique of the Film ‘Obsession: Radical Islam’s War against the West,’” conference chair Shahrzad Mojab (OISE) questioned the means by which social institutions contribute to violence in our society. Shirley Steinberg (McGill) recalled receiving the film in her issue of the Chronicle of Higher Learning. For her and other scholars on the panel, the Clarion Fund’s distribution abroad in the film was a clear example of the rampant Islamophobia of the post-9/11 world. Referring to this as an “exoticizing and terrorizing” of the Islamic andArab peoples, she proposed a letter writing campaign to mobilize against Islamophobia. Amir Hassanpour (Toronto) warned against the ideology of hate prominently displayed throughout the film, highlighting the similarities with historic fascism. Jasmin Zine problemitized the discursive tropes employed by the film’s creators, which served to “close minds, not open them.” To move past this “pedagogy of fear,” she called for a shift toward a pedagogy of hope rooted in anti-imperialist thought ...