Imperialist Wars and Liberal Peace

Abstract

TheAssociation ofMuslim Social Scientists of NorthAmerica (AMSS) heldits fourth annual Canadian Regional Conference in Toronto at the OntarioInstitute for Studies in Education (OISE) on 1 November 2008. This event,whichwas cosponsored by the Department ofAdult Education and CounselingPsychology (OISE) and the Women and Gender Studies Institute at theUniversity of Toronto, was coordinated by Jasmin Zine (Wilfrid Laurier)and Maliha Chishti (OISE). The keynote address was presented by AnnRusso (DePaul University).The theme of this year’s conference, “Imperialist Wars and LiberalPeace,” brought together a group of scholars to critically engage the natureof the new imperialist wars that are being waged on a smaller scale. Fromthe “war on terror” to the various forms of intra-state warfare, participantssought to address how a viable peace and prosperity can be achieved for amajority of the world’s people, rather than just for an elite minority.During the morning plenary session, “Imperialist ‘Obsession’ withHate: A Critique of the Film ‘Obsession: Radical Islam’s War against theWest,’” conference chair Shahrzad Mojab (OISE) questioned the means bywhich social institutions contribute to violence in our society. Shirley Steinberg(McGill) recalled receiving the film in her issue of the Chronicle ofHigher Learning. For her and other scholars on the panel, the ClarionFund’s distribution abroad in the film was a clear example of the rampantIslamophobia of the post-9/11 world. Referring to this as an “exoticizingand terrorizing” of the Islamic andArab peoples, she proposed a letter writingcampaign to mobilize against Islamophobia. Amir Hassanpour(Toronto) warned against the ideology of hate prominently displayedthroughout the film, highlighting the similarities with historic fascism.Jasmin Zine problemitized the discursive tropes employed by the film’screators, 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 rootedin anti-imperialist thought ...