In the last four years there has been an unprecedented expansion at Canadian universities in the field of Middle East and Islamic studies, with over thirty new academic hires from Canada, the U.S., the Middle East and Europe. This expansion reflects the growing significance and importance of this field in light of recent immigration from the Middle East, issues regarding the place of religion in Canadian society as well as public interest and anxiety about the nature of Islam.

After September 11, 2001, and again after the bombings in London in July 2005, this field of expertise has found itself in the limelight of media attention and in high demand to explain, mediate and advocate. The workshop was designed to bring together these young scholars for the first time for three days of critical reflection and policy formulation in order to provide an urgently needed inventory of the strengths and weaknesses of Middle East and Islamic Studies in Canada as well as of long-term understanding and future strategies in conflict prevention and resolution both in Canada and the Middle East.

During day one of the conference panel presentations discussed matters relating to teaching the Arab-Israeli conflict, Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, academic freedom and challenges of multiculturalism. Day two was primarily dedicated to newly-recruited academics at Canadian universities. They presented their research projects that largely related to four thematic areas, namely religious networks and the transmission of ideas in the Muslim World; diasporic identities; women and conflict in Israel/Palestine, Iraq and Algeria; and the challenging of epistemological conventions in the Middle East and the West. The final day brought the participants together for plenary sessions that discussed professional, pedagogical and policy issues and strategies for the future of Middle East and Islamic Studies in Canada. In this context, Haideh Moghessi and Saeed Rahnema (both York University) reported about their MCRI project on Diaspora, Islam, and gender that focused on Canada and several Middle Eastern countries. Similarly, Tareq Ismael and Jacqueline Ismael (both University of Calgary) provided an overview of the International University of Iraq Initiative that they had helped coordinate.

It was particularly during this final day of the workshop that the participants formulated important recommendations for the future of Middle East and Islamic Studies in Canada. First and foremost, they emphasized that Canada needs to invest more money into the teaching of Middle East languages. While the workshop showed that Canada had the potential to assume a leadership role in the field of Middle East and Islamic Studies, the participants highlighted the fact that in the crucial area of teaching Middle East languages the country was nowhere near the level of infrastructure and funding available to students in the U.S., Germany or the U.K. For instance, Jens Hanssen (U of T) emphasized that offering students the opportunity to acquire proficiency in languages such as Arabic, Farsi/Persian, Hebrew, and Turkish was an indispensable part of the universities’ task to equip them with the analytical tools necessary to developing a nuanced understanding of politics, history, religion, and society in the Middle East. Acquiring these language skills was thus vital not just for future academics but also for those who as policy makers, diplomats, journalists or social workers would be prominently involved in conflict prevention and resolution both in Canada and the Middle East.

At the same time, attention was drawn to the fact that very few universities in Canada offered language instruction as part of their concentrations and/or degree programs in Middle East and Islamic Studies. Moreover, unlike its counterparts in the U.S., Germany, or the U.K. the Government of Canada did not offer any funding to students who wanted to pursue language studies in the Middle East. Very much in contrast to wealthy universities and liberal arts colleges in the U.S. Canadian universities on their own did not have the financial means to send students to language programs in the region.

To offer Canadian students of Middle East and Islamic Studies the same opportunities in terms of studying languages that were available to their peers in the U.S. and Europe, the participants proposed the creation of a Canadian Middle East Language Consortium. The purpose of this initiative would be two-fold. On the one hand the consortium would help universities pool their financial resources and jointly raise funds with a view to offering stipends for language studies in the region itself. On the other hand, it would allow Canadian students to take summer courses in Middle East languages at regional clusters across the country.

As a first step towards creating the proposed consortium a task force of seven Middle East scholars was formed. The members of the task force will prepare a survey about the teaching of Middle languages at Canadian universities. The survey will include not only data on which languages are offered at what university, but also recommendations on how the teaching of these languages could be improved and expanded.

Another set of recommendations focused on the creation of a Canadian Middle East Studies Association independent of MESA. Since its inception in the 1960s the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) had always encouraged the participation of Canadian scholars, and since 1995 its Canadian members had automatically been members of the Canadian Committee of MESA (CANMES). However, the presentations during the first day of the workshop were important reminders that the pressure MESA experienced was due to the political climate in the U.S. and was, as yet, non-existent in Canada. At the same time, the field of Middle East and Islamic Studies in Canada faced a variety of specific challenges and issues. Moreover, as a result of new procedures for entry into the U.S. that had been introduced in the aftermath of 9/11, Canadian scholars of Middle East origin have found it increasingly difficult to attend the annual meetings of MESA.

In panel discussions and proposals participants therefore emphasized the need to create a Canadian Middle East Studies Association that would function independently from MESA. Its principal purpose would be to serve as an organization tailored to address the specific needs, challenges, and issues of Middle East and Islamic Studies in Canada. Holding meetings on a regular basis to create a nation-wide forum for dialogue and debate in this field would be of particular importance in this regard. Moreover, the new association could also play an important role in terms of coordinating outreach activities. During panel discussions participants presented various scenarios concerning the creation and format of a future Canadian Middle East Studies Association. For instance, Amal Ghazal (Dalhousie/U of T) and Thomas Kühn (Simon Fraser) proposed a solution whereby CANMES would evolve into an independent, full-fledged association while still retaining a measure of affiliation to MESA that would be subject to future definition. This proposal led to a debate which resulted in a decision on the part of the CANMES board to retain the status of CANMES as a committee within MESA and to recommend at the same time the creation of a separate, independent Canadian Middle East Studies Association.

Moreover, there was a strong sense that an independent Canadian Middle East Studies Association needed to develop close ties with other scholarly associations of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Canada. For instance, it was suggested that it should join the Consortium for Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS, a.k.a. "the Learneds") and hold its meetings at the annual meeting of the "Learneds." This would allow the new association to better reach out to colleagues in other disciplines. With a view to the future Canadian Middle East Studies Association joining CFHSS participants pointed out that it might be useful to have a dialogue with the presidents of other area studies groups. More specifically, they listed a number of advantages CFHSS membership would offer. For instance, it was pointed out that CFHSS is funded by the Federal Government and an important partner of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) in terms of both disciplines and sub-disciplines. Moreover, all member organizations hold an annual meeting for ten days at alternating university campuses with a particular discipline’s proceedings being scheduled for a period of two or three consecutive days. Costs for member organizations to hold their meeting at the CFHSS Annual Meeting are covered through funding provided by CFHSS which also takes care of providing accommodation for participants. CFHSS thus provides a national umbrella structure for annual meetings. CFHSS also offers funding for its member organizations to publish their own journals. Finally, CFHSS provides graduate students with travel grants to attend annual meetings and therefore with opportunities to network and advertise the results of their own research.

Moreover, detailed recommendations were made concerning the foci and activities of a future Canadian Middle East Studies Association. In this context, Ghazal and Kühn presented a list of suggestions focusing on possible ways for CANMES to assume a more prominent role until the new association had been launched. In this context, they suggested that CANMES could provide services to undergraduate and graduate students that would go beyond the allocation of conference travel grants on which it had concentrated so far.

More specifically, the presenters suggested that it would greatly contribute to raising CANMES’ profile if it was to initiate an annual prize of $200,- for the best undergraduate essay and of $400,- for the best MA thesis in Middle East and Islamic Studies at a Canadian university. Moreover, they highlighted the importance of making available grants that would help students take summer courses in Middle East languages at Canadian universities. For instance, CANMES could start by awarding three annual language study grants that would be competitive and cover the costs of air travel and/or the fees for any summer course in a Middle East language offered at university level in Canada. Currently, U of T and McGill would be obvious choices in this regard. The presenters also suggested considering Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia who have recently started to offer Farsi and Arabic, respectively. By making sure that students could earn transfer credits for these courses CANMES would make this initiative even more attractive.

Finally, the presenters proposed that at a later stage CANMES could also give out grants for language courses in the region itself. In this connection, they emphasized the importance of thinking about ways in which CANMES could assume the role of an interface between Canadian universities and local language centers to negotiate discounts and to make sure that Canadian students could earn transfer credits for taking these courses.

Participants also suggested smaller workshops and conferences with a more specific focus as an alternative to a large annual meeting of the future Canadian Middle East Studies Association. As one possible example they referred to a conference on the 40^th anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war that Celia Rothenberg (McMaster) had proposed during an earlier panel. Similarly, they mentioned the Great Lakes Ottoman Workshop (GLOW) that had already met twice and would do so again in Toronto on March 17-19, 2006.

Participants also emphasized the importance of making sure that those scholars from the field who taught and published in French at universities in Québec would form an integral part of the new association.

Finally, participants suggested that Canadian scholars in the field of Middle East and Islamic Studies should hone their curriculum with the Canadian public in mind and make it more Canada specific. The furthering of scholar and student exchanges between universities in Canada and the Middle East was identified as another important desideratum.

During the first day of the workshop senior panelists from the U.S. expressed their concern about the degree to which academic freedom had been affected in the U.S. in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001. For instance, Beshara Doumani (University of California, Berkeley) argued that the global war on terrorism that the Bush administration together with its allies had been waging since the fall of 2001 had bred an increasingly interventionist security state. Of particular importance in this connection was the passing of the Patriot Act which had led to an unprecedented curtailing of civil liberties. The war on terrorism had also been used by the current U.S. government to silence internal opposition by denouncing voices of dissent as unpatriotic. Moreover, this conflict had been framed in un-intellectual terms as a "clash of civilizations."

At the same time, the field of Middle East and Islamic studies had come increasingly under attack by advocacy groups and well-connected individuals, such as Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes. As Zachary Lockman (New York University) pointed out, their goal was to silence voices of critical scholarship that they perceived as ideological threats. According to Juan Cole (University of Michigan) the field had been largely helpless vis-à-vis these attempts at vilifying Middle Eastern and Islamic studies in the U.S. As an example he drew attention to the fact that four past presidents of MESA had been unable to get the Wall Street Journal to publish their reply to an article by Martin Kramer. As a possible step towards representing Middle East and Islamic studies more effectively vis-à-vis the U.S. federal government Cole suggested the creation of an action committee.

Moreover, Lockman emphasized that university administrations had sometimes failed to back up their faculty against public campaigns of advocacy groups. Doumani asserted that for university administrations the priority was to prevent these attacks against faculty. Their idea of academic freedom was to be free from both overly controversial faculty and government intervention.

During panel discussions attention was drawn to the fact that scholars of the Middle East and of Islam in Canada were affected by these developments in several respects. On the one hand, advocacy groups, such as Campus Watch had made efforts at establishing a presence also at a number of Canadian universities that featured departments and/or concentrations in Middle East and Islamic studies. In the following panel with senior Canadian scholars Nasrine Rahimieh (McMaster) pointed out an issue that was perhaps more important, namely the fact that due to new immigration procedures that were introduced in the aftermath of 9/11 especially Canadian scholars of Middle East origin have found it increasingly difficult to enter the United States and hence to attend academic meetings and events south of the border. In his welcome address Jens Hanssen (U of T) drew attention to the fact that "… immigrants to Canada today are registered with the FBI as the two countries’ security apparatuses merge."

Overall, however, there was a sense that the issues that the senior U.S. panelists had highlighted were specific to the contexts of U.S. domestic politics and academia. In Canada, scholars of the Middle East and of Islam did not, on the whole, face the considerable political pressures that their colleagues in the United States had to deal with. In this respect, then, Canada offered far better conditions for the nuanced and critical study of the Middle East and of Islam. In this context, Tareq Ismael (University of Calgary) reminded the participants of the Canadian roots of the International Association of Middle Eastern Studies back in the early 1970s. However, in her presentation Amila Buturovic (York University) discussed some of the challenges that scholars, who taught Islamic studies, faced in Canada. For instance, she pointed out that being a professor of Islamic Studies at a Canadian university often entailed becoming a spokesperson for Islam itself. This, she argued, was one of the outcomes of a policy of multiculturalism in which a Western hierarchy was still intact: as a result, individuals were called upon to explain and speak on behalf of entire communities.

Another crucial point that was raised during panel presentations and discussions that day was the issue of outreach. Both Lockman and Fawaz emphasized the need for scholars of the Middle East and of Islam to communicate their nuanced understanding of religion, society, politics and history of the Muslim world more effectively to a non-academic audience. This was particularly imperative in the charged atmosphere post 9/11 when in large parts of the media simplistic connections between terrorism and Islam had proliferated and experts on terrorism had often come to be regarded as experts on the Middle East. At the same time, especially Fawaz expressed considerable frustration about the difficulties that academics faced in their attempts to make their voices heard in the mass media. She recalled that several times she had been booked for an interview only to be replaced at the last minute "by a retired general." With this in view, it was all the more crucial to realize the importance of teaching as a way for scholars in the field to reach out to a larger audience.

The first day of the workshop concluded with a keynote address by Ato Quayson, the director of U of T’s Centre of Diaspora and Transnational Studies, on "Diasporas and Interdisciplinarity."

The themes of the panel presentations during day two of the workshop showed very clearly the new vitality and dynamism that the field of Middle East and Islamic studies has recently acquired in Canada. The fact that scholars of the Middle East and of Islam at Canadian universities are grounded in a variety of disciplines and work on topics that cover a broad range of regions and time periods must be recognized as an important asset in terms of tackling central human security issues, such as the combating of Islamophobia. Given Canada’s military involvement in Afghanistan and the growing number of Canadians who are Muslims and/or from the Middle East, scholars of the Middle East and of Islam have an increasingly important role to play in terms of combating Islamophobia and preventing domestic conflict more generally. However, rising to the occasion as public educators involves more than landing the greatest possible number of op-ed pieces and prime time news channel interviews. Scholars must focus on researching the Middle East and Islam in all their complexity and on bringing the results of their research to the class room and to other forms of outreach where they can make a nuanced argument and are not confined to the straightjacket of 500 words or a two-minute statement. Here, it is crucial to resist the temptation of dividing the field into a supposedly "relevant" part that deals with recent history and contemporary issues and a less relevant one that covers everything before the 18^th century. Those who teach Quranic studies, the history of Coptic Christians, or Mamluk architecture have a crucial role to play in demonstrating that Islam cannot be reduced to Ussama bin Laden and that Middle East societies cannot be reduced to Islam or, for that matter, to religion. The events of 9/11 and of July 2005 as well as the growing number of Canadians who are Muslims and/or Middle East origin also call into question the boundaries of the field. Middle East and Islamic studies cannot be understood as something exclusively relating to a distant region between Casablanca and Mindanao. At the same time, participants of the workshop expressed their concern that the deployment of Canadian forces in Afghanistan might lead to an increasing militarization of Canadian society and might generate growing hostility towards Muslims in Canada. Attacks on Muslim students at the University of Toronto this spring show that this is more than just a remote possibility. Recognizing and treating Islamophobia as a form of racism, as suggested in a statement signed by U of T faculty, would be one way to respond effectively to these developments.

The workshop gave Canadian scholars of the Middle East and of Islam a better sense not only of where their field stands at this point, but also of the direction in which they should move it in the years to come. It is to be hoped that meetings of this kind will become a familiar part of Middle East and Islamic Studies conferences in North America.

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