‘Engage through trade and ideas’ was the theme of Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim in his address through live video teleconferencing to an international business gathering in Washington DC yesterday.

Invited to deliver a keynote speech at the ‘Business Opportunities in the Muslim World’ conference organised by Muslim American non-governmental bodies and the US Chamber of Commerce, Anwar apologised for not being able to be physically present because he was having “a rather difficult time dealing with the Malaysian courts.”

anwar ibrahim nizar jamaluddin lim kit siang perak ceramah in pj 130509 04 Hearing for Anwar’s second sodomy trial is set to begin next week.

Entrepreneurs and delegates from the US, North Africa and West Asia were present at the business conference, organised in response to President Barack Obama’s call in a major address in Cairo earlier this month, that there be more entrepreneurial interaction between the West and the Muslim world.

Anwar reminded his audience that the proselytising zeal of Muslims in the eight century went hand in hand with the quest for new trade routes such that within a brief span of time, there was commercial intercourse in the span of the Islamic crescent connecting the western edge of the Sahara to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq.

He cited the observations of a Muslim cosmo [EDITING: 107361] polite of that era, Ibn Saghir, on the commercial ties that existed between Muslim and Jewish traders as a salutary reminder that there were emollient antecedents to today’s antipathetic ones between the two faiths.

Anwar said that in Southeast Asia, Islamic traders had encountered a Hindu and Buddhist diaspora that was “transformed into a major hub of Islamic civilisation, not by military confrontation but rather through trade, commerce and the peaceful proselytising of sufi saints.”

A debt the West owed the Arabs

He said Muslim traders frequented the European cities like Venice and because of trade at points of geographic intersection between the Occident and the Levant, cities like Cairo and Istanbul became focal points of commerce and cultural observation.

Further, he said the annual Haj pilgrimage not only provided spiritual succor but also the opportunity to meet and exchange news and information among people from all points of the Muslim world and beyond.

“Amidst the commercial activity were profound exchanges of philosophy and metaphysics, and debates that crossed religious divides,” said Anwar, dwelling on a pet theme that there’s more to be gained in cross-cultural engagement than in angry isolation.

Anwar cited Obama’s crediting of Muslim scholars in his speech in Cairo for keeping alive Greek classical learning that helped spur the European Renaissance, widely seen as a debt the West owed the Arabs.

He said that Obama’s reaching out to Muslims held prospect of drawing “credible partners in the Muslim world” who could jointly tackle the great questions of the current moment in world history “when a global recession of epic proportions” and “a Muslim world in transition and flux” conjoined to render hitherto intractable issues like the Palestinian-Israeli divide and climate change more malleable.