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 ...