We are delighted to welcome Sherene Razack, professor of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto, as our keynote speaker. This event is co-presented with the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University. Everyone is welcome and there is no cost to attend. Join us for refreshments at 5:00 p.m. Professor Razack's address will begin at 6:00 p.m. This is a wheelchair-accessible venue. See map here.


Professor Razack will be speaking on "The ‘Sharia Law Debate’ in Ontario: The Modernity/Premodernity Distinction in Legal Efforts to Protect Women From Culture".


Abstract: The normative figure in Western feminism  remains the liberal autonomous individual of modernity. ‘Other’ women are those who have their freedom to choose restricted. Typically, ‘other’ women are those burdened by culture and hindered by their communities from entering modernity. If we remain in the terrain of thinking about women as vulnerable or imperilled, and some women as particularly imperilled, as we generally do of Muslim women, we remain squarely within the framework of patriarchy understood as abstracted from all other systems. A modernity/premodernity distinction will continue to invade any projects intending to help Muslim women.  This paper shows the persistence of the modernity/premodernity distinction in contemporary debates around applying Sharia law to the settlement of family law disputes under the Arbitration Act in Ontario, Canada. I argue below that in their concern to curtail conservative and patriarchal  forces within the Muslim community, Canadian feminists (both Muslim and Non-Muslim) utilized frameworks that installed a secular/religious divide that functions as a colour line, marking the difference between the modern, enlightened West, and tribal, religious Muslims. I suggest that feminist responses might have helped to sustain a new form of governmentality, one in which the productive power of the imperilled Muslim woman functions to keep in line Muslim communities at the same time that it defuses more radical feminist and anti-racist critique of conservative religious forces.


Professor Razack's research and teaching interests lie in the area of race and gender issues in the law.   Her most recent book is Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism (University of Toronto Press,  2004). Previous books include an edited collection Race, Space and the Law: Unmapping A White Settler Society (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002), Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998,1999, 2000) and Canadian Feminism and the Law: The Women’s Legal and Education Fund and the Pursuit of Equality (Toronto: Second Story Press, 1991). She has also published articles on Canadian national mythologies and immigration policies of the 1990s, race, space and prostitution, and gendered racism. She is a founding and coordinating committee member of Researchers and Academics of Colour for Equality (R.A.C.E.).


Related Links:

Buy Race, Space and the Law from Between the Lines.

Buy Looking White People in the Eye and Dark Threats and White Knights from University of Toronto Press.

See Professor Razack's webpage at OISE/UofT

See the website of the 5th Annual Conference of Researchers and Academics of Colour for Equality (R.A.C.E.), at the University of Regina, May 4-6, 2006. The conference theme is “The Race/Culture Divide in Education, Law and the Helping Professions”.

Check out the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University, co-presenters of this event.