On the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, we can remind ourselves of the saying from an era before that event which was a “New Beginning” between Mao’s China, the United States, and the rest of the world: “Only Nixon could go to China”.
Twenty years from today in 2029, on the 40th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, we will look back and say, “Only Obama could go to Cairo “; “Only Obama could go to Egypt “.
He was channelling the oratory of another African American, Malcolm X / Malik El-Shabazz, even following his footsteps by first going to Saudi Arabia then to Egypt.
As a Canadian, no mention nor nuance hint about Guantanamo and Canadian Citizen Omar Khadr being held there nor the Uighur being held there.
On anniversary of Tiananmen Massacre, I was still expecting some Obama-esque charming indictment of that, especially when he talks of democracy in the Arab World, well, Mainland China is still waiting. But then again, China holds so much US debt that perhaps no American President will ever again be able to speak on this issue.
As a pioneer and practioner in the Islamic Banking Industry, I have spoken with officials in NYC with the Treasury Department, literally a few days after Lehman Brothers collapsed, they admitted as much that had the US home financing market been based on Islamic Mortgages, and Islamic Financing ethics and contracts, the current U.S. economic crisis would be much less of a catastrophe than it is now.
Dubai has collapsed and all the money and dealmaking has quietly returned to Saudi Arabia, Obama could have caused a great infusion of cash into the US economy by mentioning Islamic Finance and Islamic Banking, or a long term JFK-like Man on the Moon like vision, by aiming for a “dual-banking system”, conventional and Islamic, or as the British call it, conventional and ‘alternative’ which is their euphemism for all things “Islamic” without using the word shariah.
The Cairo Speech could have reached into history to remind us all that the english word “Cheque” comes from the arabic word “Sakk” and it was the Ottomans who most recently impacted the U.S. in forming their republic as the U.S. founding fathers looked not to Ancient Rome, but rather to Istanbul (née Islambul nee Constantinople) as a blueprint for government and administration.
Had Obama even said “Islamic Finance” once, he could have caused in my words a net in-flow of “Shariah Compliant Capital Flight” into U.S. Money centre banks and markets.
He did not.