Anwar al Awlaki is dead. Best thing to say is simply, Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un and leave the rest to Allah.
(though, I did have more to say)
Tagged: Ummah Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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aziz
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aziz
a pro-ummah polemic from Qasir Yadhi about the merits of Ummah as a source of identity versus nationalism or tribalism. Some good observations, but fatally flawed here:
Pros And Cons of Each System
Tribalism
Pros: There are clear boundaries and family ties. There appears to be a biological reason to support members of the tribe because they are related to you.
Cons: There is no right and wrong except in relation to the tribe and individuals may be taught to hate and fight others simply by reason of birth.
Nation-State
Pros: Attachment to a single geographic land
Cons: There is nothing binding members to one another. May lead to false arrogance related to your nationality. World Wars I and II were fought over nationalism. Europe has suffered greatly under nationalism in the 20th century, which is one reason their levels of patriotism rank lower than levels in some other countries.
Ummah
Pros: Share a common morality, ethos, vision
Cons: None for a religious person but for an atheist, the ummah system may be seen as creating hatred between groups.
ummwhat? the dig at atheists aside, no cons for a religious person? none? I think he should re-read the “Cons” for tribalism and ponder whether theres any difference between Ummah and Tribalism at all in the minds of very “religious” persons.
still, his conclusion is a good one. worth reading for that alone.
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Hitch
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Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
I don’t know if it is productive to go too deep into the weeds on this, but I just want to contribute a couple of thoughts
To the extent that the problem is methods of identity/organization that create “others” the Ummah would be preferred in that sense to tribalism and nationalism. It is a wider and more coherent form of identity that is theoretically at least based in a moral vision which should also include respect for others as members of the human family even if they are outside the ummah.
Modern nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon as far as world history goes and if it is true that it is weakening already in Europe, where it orginated and was in many ways most powerful, then that is just further indication that it is not something that will last forever, of course that doesn’t mean it will end next year either, or even in our lifetimes, as a very powerful social force.
All of these concepts are broad and can be used in a variety of ways. There are certain kinds of tribalism or nationalism or identity as an ummah, or identity as a human that can and should be embraced and others that must be resisted — it all depends on what we mean when we use the terms.
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Hitch
Luckily I don’t think agreement on terms is necessary. Just what happens really matters.
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aziz
It is a wider and more coherent form of identity that is theoretically at least based in a moral vision
in an idealized sense, sure, but of course Ummah as practiced is hardly true to that moral vision. The latent anti-semitic and anti-Shia tendencies of people like YQ who advocate this fanciful notion of “super ummah” seriously undermines any theoretical advantage of Ummah over tribalism.
fundamentally, human beings who are muslim are flawed like other human beings. And thus Ummah degenerates into Tribalism at an indiviudual level. There’s no such thing as Ummah in practice, aside from being a rhetorical cudgel for some muslims to browbeat other muslims with.
(our earlier thread about Yasir Qadhi is also relevant here)
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shams
there is a biological basis for all behavior.
in the EEA consanguinous kinship tribes arose as a fitness advantage, and then religions extended memetic kinship benefit to a wider memetic tribe.
Nations arose for protection and security as co-geolocated amalgations of memetic and genetic tribes. it makes no biological sense to talk about religion trumping nationalism.
Race trumps religion. Consider Dafur where muslims oppress black muslims, or the US where white xians oppressed black xians. -
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
Aziz, I understand the points you are making (although I reject completely your specific accusations against Shaykh Yasir) but I don’t understand this form of argument. Muslims are humans and imperfect, some are even utterly corrupt. Some are even evil. Okay, so all of a sudden all virtuous concepts in Islam become “shams” as concepts because they are not practiced correctly or perfectly by all Muslims…huh? Is there no such thing as rahmah because most Muslims are not merciful, is there no such thing as taqwa because most Muslims are openly sinful, is there no such thing as ‘ilm because most of us Muslims are ignorant.
Again, makes sense as some kind of rhetorical tool, but as an argument it proves way too much.
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Lawrence of Arabia
“super ummah” seriously undermines any theoretical advantage of Ummah over tribalism.
“The Ummah” clearly has advantages over any attempts to base group identities in biology, (human?) nature, culture, etc., which can do nothing more than than forge small group identities. These make universal projects difficult to forge, heighten the necessity of conflict between one group and another, while undermining human freedom (by basing identity/behavior in some given “fact”, or set of “facts”, which was itself a historical construction).
The Ummah may be put to poor use at time, but one can hardly fail to appreciate its very distinct advantages over small group identities/micropolitics.
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Shams al-Nahar
but the super-ummah is powerless over both memetic and genetic tribalism. we saw that demonstrated in Iraq.
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Lawrence of Arabia
Obviously, there are sections of Iraq or Afghanistan that neither will nor can wake up tomorrow and decide not to be tribal, any more than NYC will, or can, wake up tomorrow and decide to revert to a feudal economy.
What something like “Ummah” does is provide a way of talking about limits of this way of organizing the production of meaning and the means of life and in the process historicizes and denaturalizes it.
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abunoor
There are people in the world today for whom various of these identities holds more meaning. There are also places where certain of these identities have more practical power and consequence and places where others do.
I thought it was clear that Shaykh Yasir was arguing about the relative merits of each source of identity theoretically and trying to lay a framework for an argument that if some people identify more with the ummah than with the particular nation state this is not a bad thing. Which is why I was a bit confused by the critiques which seemed to be based on whether ummah really was the strongest identity among Muslims or whether all those who claim to care about the ummah live up to their claim.
It is also, extremely important as LoA points out not to fall into the trap of thinking that any of these concepts are “natural” or cannot be subject to change or influence over time.
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thabet
I strongly agree with the view that the idea of an ‘umma’ allows so-called ‘natural’ affiliations and identities to be quite literally torn down.
But at some point, when you’ve done the tearing down, you will start building again. And in that case doesn’t the value of a umma-based identity becomes so theoretical that it is rendered meaningless? At least politically and perhaps in other spheres too, though maybe less so (social, cultural).
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Lawrence of Arabia
This will probably be where AbuNoor and I would part ways, and it is why I was somewhat dismissive of “theological” alternatives to Marxian critiques of capitalism in an earlier thread: the critiques always arise from, and remain determined by, the setting which produced them; presumably this setting is flawed, otherwise you wouldn’t need the critique to start with.
So, yes, I agree with you. “Ummah” is primarily providing a way to pursue the potential for progress, the hope and imagination, that is already immanent within the contradictions of ‘what is’ (e.g., “tribalism”, but it could just as well be capitalism). [If it is a critique from the outside, from a source external to the community, then what you have is one form of societal organization, confronting and conflicting with another. This is why change is most effective when it comes from within.] The changes arise, it would seem, precisely from the displacement of one set of practices by another (i.e., practices don’t just disappear without something else taking their place…”tearing down” is already “building again”), in an attempt to resolve tensions that are already present.
Henosis/tawhid underlies the experience of limitation, and drives us to transcend it. In this sense the Ummah is the Future.
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thabet
Qasir Yadhi? Heh.
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johnpi
…a closer look behind the doors of the mosque and inside the conversations between the engineer and the doctor reveal a more complex picture of a young first-generation American Muslim man living a life of dissonance between his identity as an American and his ideology as a Muslim who had accepted a literal, rigid interpretation of Islam, akin to the puritanical Wahhabi and Salafi interpretations of Islam that define the theology of militancy inside the Muslim world today, according to community members who knew Hasan.
Along the way of reporting and describing the two men’s conversations, Nomani has a critique of the common use of the word “ummah” among some in the Muslim world today.
It’s critical that we ditch the concept of the “ummah” with a capital “U” and recognize that we are an “ummah” with a small “u,” meaning our religious identity doesn’t have to supersede other loyalties and identities. This attempt to push an “Ummah” is the politics of ideologues of puritanical Islam who want to mollify dissent. Sadly, too many moderates have bought into it. We aren’t monolithic, and we shouldn’t try to be. Look at al Qaeda, the Taliban and Pakistani militant groups: They don’t have a problem with killing Muslims, slaying Muslims in attacks from Amman, Jordan, to Islamabad, Pakistan.
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Buzz
It’s critical that we ditch the concept of the “ummah” with a capital “U” and recognize that we are an “ummah” with a small “u,” meaning our religious identity doesn’t have to supersede other loyalties and identities. This attempt to push an “Ummah” is the politics of ideologues of puritanical Islam who want to mollify dissent. Sadly, too many moderates have bought into it.
*zing*
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aziz
hey, she plagiarized me. from many years ago:
http://cityofbrass.blogspot.com/2003/09/good-of-ummah.html
not to mention Tariq Ramadan:
http://cityofbrass.blogspot.com/2004/08/tariq-ramadan-us-and-them.html
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johnpi
Take it as a compliment: You’re influential – uncredited, but influential.
If I had a dollar for every time something that originated in the blogosphere showed up in the MSM uncredited…
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aziz
heh. i dont really need credit; will settle for just an offhand admission that they read myblog
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Len
Fine points and all.
But:
As a Muslim-American writer-activist, challenging rules that banish women to the back corners of mosques, I have been told that I must stay quiet so as not to cause “fitna,” or division, inside the community.
Five years ago, in an email to community members, a member of the board of trustees of the Muslim Community Center argued one of my objectives was to “create fitna (chaos) in the community.”
Damn, she is still eating off that isn’t she?
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aziz
yes. Everything always relates back to Morgantown. Morgantown was the Alamo. Morgantown was Karbala. Morgantown was Alpha and Omega. All roads lead to Morgantown. There is no Mosque but Morgantown, and Asra Nomani is its Prophet.
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null
Brilliant.
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Len
At least there were no Daniel Pearl references in the article itself.
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thabet
An interesting argument for why Muslim nations should take up the task of helping Afghanistan:
The solution? Muslim and regional states must fill the void.
Emirati, Jordanian and Turkish troops have been in Afghanistan, though in small numbers and doing very limited roles.
The author, Arif Rafiq, continues to the meat of his argument:
The Organization of the Islamic Conference, the association of more than four dozen Muslim states, should set up an Afghanistan contact group, led by Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. The group would lead a coalition of Muslim states responsible for political reconciliation, peacekeeping, economic development, and governmental capacity building in Afghanistan.
I like the idea of the Organization of the Islamic Conference do something other than bleating about ‘Islamophobia in Europe’, though it is unlikely to happen.
And just as some would like the US to admit to its mistakes in Muslim countries, it would be good if Muslim countries which have a dubious foreign policy of their own could admit to some of their mistakes; especially Pakistan and Saudi Arabia with respect to Afghanistan. Though, again, I wouldn’t advise holding my breath waiting for that to occur.
It’s a nice idea by Rafiq. On paper at least.
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buzz
Kooks & Criminals #1
This is the 1st installment in an inward looking series to find the lame and limping in the Muslim community and create discussion and solicit suggestions for a cure.
Wahhabi incites persecution of Sufis in Sri Lanka:
Lankan police hunt for Muslim preacher from TN
P K Balachandran
First Published : 03 Aug 2009 04:34:00 AM ISTCOLOMBO: Sri Lankan police are looking for Kovai Ayoob, a controversial Islamic preacher from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu.
The hunt assumes significance in the context of a clash on July 24 between fundamentalist Tawheed Jamaath and moderate Sufis in the western coastal town of Beruwela in which two persons were killed.Immigration Controller P A Abeykoon told The Sunday Times that he had asked the police to catch Ayoob. As per Ayoob’s visa he is a tourist, but violating the rules he was propagating, through public speeches, the ideas of the radical Wahabist Tawheed Jamaath in Sri Lanka and creating tension between the fundamentalists and the traditional sufis.
Ayoob’s plan to be present at a religious gathering in Kalmunai in the Eastern Province last Friday was called off because of the police hunt. But his speech for the occasion, delivered over the phone, was broadcast with loudspeakers.
In 2006, another radical Islamic preacher from Tamil Nadu, P Jainulabdeen, popularly known as PJ, was deported for creating sectarian tension in Colombo. Recently, in Ottamavadi in the eastern province, the moulvi of one sect had the moulvi of another sect abducted.
In Beruwela on July 24, the moulvi of the Tawheed/Wahabi Masjidur Rahman mosque publicly dubbed the moulvi of the Sufi Bukari Thakkiya mosque and his congregation as kafirs (rejectors of Islam) because the latter were holding a “Kanduri” feast in honour of a Muslim saint. In the clash that followed, two persons were killed. More than 130 are currently under detention for rioting.
The Wahabis condemn the deification of human beings, however saintly they might have been. They also consider holding feasts, with music and other forms of merriment, in honour of saints as utterly un-Islamic. However, most Muslims in Sri Lanka, being under the influence of South Indian Islam, believe in the worship of saints and observe their anniversaries with feasts.
SURRENDER ARMS: The DIG of the Eastern Province, Edison Gunatilleke, extended the deadline for the surrender of arms by Muslim militants. He believes that there are about 300 Muslim militants in Sri Lanka, most of them operating in the Eastern Districts of Batticaloa and Amparai.
Police believe that some of these militants have links with Saudi Arabia-inspired young Islamic scholars. They could also be part of the underworld in Colombo and also be working for Muslim political leaders.
A great comment followed:
Islam is a religion which preaches PEACE and CHARITY. If there is anybody propagating conflict he should be decapitated in the market place. I am Sure Sri lanka people will solve this problem
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thabet
This is the 1st installment in an inward looking series to find the lame and limping in the Muslim community and create discussion and solicit suggestions for a cure.
The problems and their solutions are different in different parts of the world, because they are tired to their context.
Western Muslims (like us) have different problems to those in Syria or Pakistan or Sri Lanka. I prefer we fixed our problems rather than lecture others about the magical “cure” that will fix their lives.
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Buzz Kill
Westerners don’t have problems with their Islam. We have problems with our politicians and our foreign policy. We can talk about that. We should.
I am talking about the Muslim community. It needs some introspection. I cannot turn a blind eye to the corrupt elements. They are there. And they’re my responsibility as much as George Bush is.
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thabet
Muslim communities, Buzz. Plural.
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Buzz Kill
Bida’at
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Buzz Kill
I prefer we fixed our problems rather than lecture others about the magical “cure” that will fix their lives.
Let me add that I have no intention of lecturing muslims from other nations how to fix their problems. I wouldn’t presume. That is really their own business.
I wish that many countries were better able to separate religious and political issues. That would be better for them to focus on which politician can build schools and improve incomes rather than who can kill more infidels or kafirs.
Just like any kook or criminal in the west, a neocon or a evangelist preacher, peoples’ influences need to be weeded out of our cultures. I think it is time to condemn and show intolerance from the middle towards the extremes that say it is OK to blow each other up.
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Buzz Kill
Finally:
Western Muslims (like us) ….
Well, there is Western and there is western.
I am invested in this culture. I was born here and I believe in its fundamental goodness. I’m a Westerner.
Then there are those that live in the West, raise their families and live out their lives here in the West, yet emotionally, they have their heart elsewhere. Some real or imagined homeland they have emigrated from long ago and they remain sour like some unwilling but self-imposed refugee.
Thankless bastards.We do not want government inteference in every avenue of our lives or in our religious discourses, do we? So what do Blair’s critics propose in this case? A government vetted Islam? No thanks. It is only Muslims who can rescue the hijacking of Islamic terminology, beliefs, practices and tenants from extremists amongst us, or from those bigoted elements in the media, whether to the left or right of the political spectrum.
– under|progress
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Shams al-Nahar
But Buzz…this is a problem with all CSSs…..fundamentalism. When a CSS comes under threat from mutant strategies from outside you get a retreat to fundamentalist beliefs including severe punishment for defection, message purity, millenialism, etc.
The fact that it is often Sufis is partly because the fundamentalists recognize Sufi memes are both more attractive and more liberal than fundamentalist memes.
The other reason Sufis are often targetted is the same reason that Jews are targetted…a club that is very hard to join…and that is percieved to hold an attitude of superiorty to outsiders.
The best defense against a retreat to fundamentalism is the Qur’an itself, and the protocols that the Prophet designed for how muslims should treat each other.-
Shams al-Nahar
I should say….the protocols the Real Most High designed, and the Prophet voiced to the people.
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Buzz Kill
Nope. I do not accept your explanation. I believe that fundamentalism is mostly an innate strategy as is mysticism like Sufism. I cannot think of an example where a person switched these camps.
You hear of PLENTY of examples where a fundamentalist deprogrammed and went totally atheist and hedonist. That should tell you something.
Basically, I think there are two tribes (as best I can to stay near your parlance): Bani Unity and Bani Separation.
The first tribe sees everything and everyone as connected. They do not follow the selfish gene or selfish meme protocol except that there is one Gene and one Meme to which they are totally submitted.
The second tribe believes they are broken off and separated from the rest of Existence and they see differences and gaps everywhere. They temporarily presume they are an absolutely unique and privileged creation high above the other sub-levels of creation. They are fire.
Tribe 1 threatens Tribe 2′s delusion. So they try to kill tribe 2 before the cognitive dissonance becomes too threatening.
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Buzz Kill
Make that T2 tries to kill off T1…
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Shams al-Nahar
hmm…..i am going to have to work out an elegant and intellectually devastating counter rich with quranic references and quotes from Dr. Boyer….but in the meantime….
the realms are up and patch 3.2 is live!
l8r
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Kawthar
It is no secret that when clerics and their Islamist allies turned into statesmen, they quickly became realists, concerned primarily with the national interests of a clearly defined nation-state, and not the utopian visions of a global, boderless Ummah. In the long run, they even became pragmatists, calculating tactical decisions in their foreign policy that only rarely were based on considerations for the plight of Muslim brethren in other countries.
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aziz
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abunoor
Obviously there is much good in the speech — as a speech. This may be my own limitation, but I just cannot get certain realites out of my mind when I read it. I cannot listen to a line about closing Guantanamo without thinking of the torture that occurred, those that are dead, the Uighurs, undeniably innocent and harmless, still languishing there…the buildup of a massive prison at Bagram in Afghanistan which from all appearances has worse conditions than Gitmo and will apparently serve the same purpose once it is closed.
When Obama talks about the injustice of Al Qaida killing innocents regardless of the grievance, I cannot help but agree….but I cannot help but notice that he cannot acknowledge the hundreds of thousands of innocents that his own country has killed, including under his own command.
When Obama talks about the historical reality of the Jewish people and their desire for a state, I cannot help but sympathize and I truly hope that all of us as Muslims can continue to try to spread an appreciation for that history among Muslims despite the fact that many pro-Israel voices seem determined to adopt hateful positions which deny the equal humanity of Palestinians and Muslims. Still, Obama can talk about Blackamericans not using violence to achieve freedom, but apparently the contradiction with his justification of the US using violence against Muslims to advance its own interests and protect its own civilians doesn’t even occur to him.
I don’t mean to be overly nitpicky, I’m just saying that when one attempts to go beyond flowery rhetoric and really say is this a vision that substantively we can share and work towards in the real world…it just becomes obvious immediately that even Obama does not really follow through on the substance of much of his claims at the end of the day.
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aziz
well, I pretty much agree with you – though it should be noted that where America’s past actions fail to meet teh standardds of the present day speech, the speech itself becomes a record against which future actions can be judged. And the speech is titled “A New Beginning” – so sure lets not forget the past but we can and should look forward. Closing Gitmo is what is important, not the torture that went on there (and will not happen again), for example.
Rhetoric isnt just rhetoric – its now the official record. Obama is now accountable to himself. For example, i can now make a much stronger argument in my campaign to classify aerial bombardment as inhumane during war, like land mines or poison gas, because the collateral damage is similar – Obama’s own words you cite about killing innocents gives me much greater authority.
I think there was an unreasonable expectation that Obama would take office and throw the switch on reversing everything we dont like about everything. Real change takes time, for it to be lasting. And its up to us to point out what Obama himself probably genuinely doesnt realize needs to be changed.
being nitpicky is good.
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Lawrence of Arabia
Violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.
I think, coming from POTUS, we call that either irony or hypocrisy. Maybe when the American army isn’t spread over the entire globe, and isn’t waging several wars, we can then lecture someone [in this case, the Palestinians] about what a dead-end violence is. Until then, it seems we have a great deal of faith in the power of violence.
And surely, if I thought this passage ran entirely counter to American foreign policy, people throughout the Middle East were either laughing or angered by such shameless and self-serving rhetoric.
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Lawrence of Arabia
On the positive side, I thought the criticism of our “liberal” allies (and obviously the biggest culprit here is France and the Netherlands) for using liberalism as a tool for attacking Islam, religious freedom and freedom of speech was right on target….and a long time coming.
I was also happy to see the U.S. back off from its democracy-crusade. I thought this speech set out a somewhat more reasonable and slightly less triumphalistic set of goals.
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aziz
solid critique from The Angry Arab worth reading.
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plimfix
Obama is a slick intelligent politician, and for once, perhaps a politician who actually believes in what he says. Whether his hopes will lead to concrete change remains to be seen, or whether his vision –even it it does come to fruition — is capable of delivering substantial political, economic, social and environmental justice, even in the US is a moot point. One thing I am sure of,. He’s not G W Bush.
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thabet
I think pretty much agree what everything Abu Noor and LoA said, especially the bits on the use of violence (but collateral damage and illegal invasions of countries based on lies seems to be ok though) and his ‘unequivocal’ end to torture and Guantanamo (errr, except kidnapping still continues, Guantanamo is still open and people continue to die in it, and no one with who had the real responsibility for torture will be punished). I also thought his refusal to condemn Israeli violence while condemning Palestinian violence was very telling.
Having said that, at this moment in time, I don’t see the value in ‘fisking’ his speech. There was very little in the way of actual policies and so on and the speech was clearly designed to be an introduction to his presidency. As Aziz says, Obama is now accountable to his own words.
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aziz
I’m cautiously optimistic about Cairo; Wajahat disagrees. Frankly, though, I’d have preferred Tehran. Yeah, I know it was never gonna happen..
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aziz
Obama’s credibility gap with the Ummah, at COB: http://bit.ly/obamacred
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razib
if there is a beliefnet tech list you should mention improving their ghetto comment system :0)
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aziz
the gheto’s name is “moveable type” and theres no escape.
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razib
they fiddled with the template too much. can’t recognize it.
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aziz
were muslims worldwide really “surprised” by Obama’s speech in Turkey? my anecdotal sense is that muslims are welcoming Obama’s attention but are waiting for more than just words. Closing Gitmo (promise) is a start, but just that.
thabet, 
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee, and 4 others are discussing. 
Len, 
null, 
Buzz Kill, 
Shams al-Nahar are discussing. 
razib and 
I think the pros and cons are too simple and perhaps also not really accurate. WWI and WWII were not overtly nationalist wars.
WWI is a strange case. It really ended up being a conflict that settled but also recreated misalignment of non-national identities with some state boundaries. But at the same time it was the transition of many monarchies into pure democracies or at least settled the “representationonal” character of monarchs that remained.
WWII on the other hand was not about nationalism in a neutral sense. It was about fascism (right wing catholicism in perverted form) against other world views. What defined the axis powers was not national identity but similar ideology.
It is indeed true that Europe’s patriotism is low. This is because Europe has learned the lesson of the misuses of nationalism to mobilize people to participate in immoral things. That’s a real pro of Europe actually. Unfortunately in recent years there is a bit of a nationalist resurgence. But the EU serves as a super set to old nation-states where boundaries and emphasis of difference are replaced by open borders and emphasis on commonality.
Also there are other models in existence or proposed. In fact the UN is very much a concept that attempts to create the benefits that here are asscribed to Ummah. Stuff like the universal declaration of human rights etc. (set aside all the obvious real world problems surrounding the UN as institution and the political poking from all angles at it)
Problem with universal morality, ethos, vision is mostly when people actually don’t agree to one particular universal.
So the opposition to the UN as concept or the Ummah as concept exactly hinges on the opposition to the particular universal that is proposed.
Unfortunately I fear the problem here is that not just atheists are likely to resist the Ummah. We do have this scary movement again towards a mismatch in world views, not unlike what triggered WWII. Fascism and pluralistic democracies were simply incompatible and conflict in Europe only subsided when that one was decided against a totalitarian outcome.
Same in this case. I find it very hard to conceive of people who have come to like their pluralism and individual choices, democratic representation to arrive at moral codes, even if adherents to Abrahamic religions, will not likely accept a universalitzed morality that goes far beyond the universal declaration of human rights. It kind of misunderstand the rather large diversity between religious groups and the conflict potential therein.
The word secular is kind of misused a lot. In pluralistic western democracies it actually mostly stands for freedom of religion. People have gotten used to be able to choose and coexist with multiple religions present (modulo obvious difficulties when some still mark the “other”). I don’t see how being religious will be enough for people to see the Ummah more desirable than a multi-religious concept which allows for diverging moral conceptions.
In reality it’s all about organizing principles. Ummah still encodes an organizing principle, around a specific religious conception. There still is the other.
My own utopia would indeed require the abandon of those organizing and rallying principles and the disappearance of the other. But this is clearly very different from Ummah because it will have to allow the other in the Jeffersonian sense.
Ultimately this, it seems to me is a negotiation about morality and not much else. And the real quesrtion is, can we negotiate a shared or compatible morality given that we do not live in a tribal culture, that nation-state conflicts have become too dangerous and that communication and social exchange has become global.