This week, the White House convened the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship, a two-day assembly of some of the most innovative and inspiring entrepreneurs from Muslim majority countries. Through my role at Ashoka, one of the largest organizations of social entrepreneurs globally, I was able to facilitate the participation of many of the attendees and attend some of the events myself.
The summit was the fulfillment of a pledge President Obama made last year in Cairo in an address to Muslims. In that speech, the President made a commitment to highlight and scale innovation from Muslim communities. By bringing together hundreds of Muslim social entrepreneurs in Washington this week, it was clear that the President’s call last year was not a laundry-list of impossible hopes; it was recognition of an already emerging reality.
The White House via Flickr
To understand Muslim social entrepreneurs, simply take a quick journey around the world. In Afghanistan, Sakena Yacoobi has developed an innovative teaching methodology that uses existing tribal and religious structures to bolster public health awareness, income generation, and communal harmony. In Morocco, Mohammad Andaloussi pioneered a system that instills students and graduates with market-driven education, increasing the relevance of new graduates in the local job market. He identifies incentives and harnesses resources from businesses, schools, and the government to collectively modernize the education system in Morocco. In the US, Ebrahim “Eboo” Patel is forging a new generation of leaders from all faiths. He encourages students to recognize shared values within their distinct faiths and then springboards service projects from those shared ideals. Sakena, Mohammad, and Ebrahim are all social entrepreneurs – the greatest existing asset in Muslim communities around the world.
The summit was part of a larger ‘National Security Council Global Engagement’ directive issued by President Obama shortly after his inauguration. The directive seeks to advance American national security and foreign policy interests by renewing relations with Muslim majority countries on the basis of mutual interest and mutual respect. While most of the sustained outcomes of this summit will depend on what delegates, agencies, and allies make of it, some were already announced. For example, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan committed to hosting next year’s summit, an important step for continuity and President Obama announced initiatives that deepen ties between Muslim entrepreneurs abroad and American entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.
With the summit as its backdrop, the Global Engagement also highlights the U.S. government’s deliberate attempt to drown out extremist rhetoric, otherwise amplified from a minority of Muslims. The summit allowed the U.S. government to partner with and strengthen voices of reason, enlightenment, and tolerance from within Muslim communities and revealed that the U.S. recognizes local entrepreneurs as significant stakeholders in Muslim majority countries.
Because social entrepreneurs are changemakers who typically change national policy through market forces, strong entrepreneurial communities abroad would contribute positively to the interests of the United States. It would set off a trajectory towards calculated and sustainable democratic reform. It would also avert the rush to electocracy, which often brings reactionary and counterproductive results that stifle the maturity of a progressive democracy. And because entrepreneurs have proven their ability to harness partnerships across multiple stakeholders, empowering them would increase collaboration among our nations. Repeatedly at the Summit, I heard Obama administration officials cite that U.S. trade with all Organization of Islamic Conference nations combined roughly equals U.S. trade with Mexico. If you remove oil from the assessment, it only equals U.S. trade with Germany. There is a significant and untapped market potential with Muslim majority countries and creating linkages with entrepreneurs who have access to markets is a significant economic growth opportunity.
A true verdict on President Obama’s Global Engagement cannot come for years more, but this administration is slowly shifting world opinion, a mammoth task. Muslim governments and leaders around the world can demonstrate their commitment to this renewed effort by strengthening the work of brilliant and innovative social entrepreneurs within their nations. They should create the regulatory environment for entrepreneurs to scale their work. Entrepreneurs like Imam Ashafa, who applied his religious education in Nigeria towards the creation of the Interfaith Mediation Center with Pastor James Wuye. Together, they train enemy youth militias to abandon violence and become conduits for model civic engagement through existing institutions like schools and places of worship.
President Obama said in Cairo, “All of us. must recognize that education and innovation will be the currency of the 21st century.” Failure to seize this opportunity would only mean that Muslim leaders are abandoning the role of development to destabilizing extremist forces like the ones Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye are so courageously enterprising against.
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