Understanding Terror: Perspectives for Canadians

While much has been said about the global war on terror, the concept remains cunningly elusive and yet undeniably pervasive. This collection of essays is an effort to discover the Canadian “self” through exploration of the terrorist “other.”

Understanding Terror, as a collection, views the war on terror from unique eyes. It defines the boundaries of terror, examines its construction in the media, and explores its relationship to the Muslim “other.” Understanding Terror takes a historical approach to consideration of terror through specific examples and its presence in the media, in North American society, and particularly in Canada.

Contributors to the volume include journalists, scholars, and public policy experts, many of whom have viewed or experienced terror first-hand. Their aim is to examine specific events, reflect on how those events might be interpreted, and provide historical context, all the while encouraging the reader to question preconceived characterizations of this highly charged political and cultural issue.

With Contributions By: Gwynne Dyer, Major Brent Beardsley, Stuart Farson, Doug Firby, Ronald Glasberg, James P. Lassoie, George Melnyk, and Reg Whitaker

Karim-Aly S. Kassam is the co-editor of Canada and September 11: Impact and Response He is international associate professor of Environmental and Indigenous Studies at Cornell University.

Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Why Try to Understand Terror?
Karim-Aly Kassam

Chapter 1. Terror and Its Boundaries
Gwynne Dyer

Chapter 2. How Canad
a Confronts Terrorism: Canadian Responses to 9/11 in Historical and Comparative Context Reg Whitaker

Chapter 3. Accounting for Disaster: The Quest for "Closure" after Aerial Mass Murder—The Downing of Air Indian Flight 182 in Comparative Perspective
Stuart Farson

Chapter 4. The Word "Terrorism" and Its Impact on Public Consciousness
George Melnyk

Chapter 5. Groping in the Dark: How the Media, Absent a Frame of Reference, Fumbled the Danish Cartoon Controversy
Doug Firby

Chapter 6. The Terrorist "Other": The Fundamentalist and the Islamist
Karim-Aly Lassam

Chapter 7. Maintaining Environmental Priorities in the Age of Terrorism
James P. Lassoie

Chapter 8. Responding to the Terror of Genocide: Learning from the Rwandan Genocide of 1994
Brent Beardsley

Chapter 9. Psycho-dynamics of Terror: A Perspective on the Evolution of Western Civilization
Ronald Glasberg

Conclusion: "The Global War on Terror" Overdetermened as a Class of Civilization
Karm-Aly Kassam

Index