That was one of the first responses I got in reply to my call to "take back Islam for the Ummah". [See my intro to "Occupy Islam" in my last post.]
Ummah, as a lot of readers will know, is an Arabic word for community. whether you like it or not Muslims are a community. a community that is in the process of being completely taken over by a fanatic fringe. And it is because those of us in the silent, moderate majority refuse to take ownership that this has happened.
I went to graduate school and studied the idea of community. A community can be any group that has communal feeling--whether it is people stranded in an elevator or people who have sworn a blood oath, or people who are bound by a thousand/fifteen hundred years of faith, culture and civilization.
So, yes, Muslims are an ummah; and I say that as a done my-time-in-the-leadership Progressive Muslim.
Ummah, as a lot of readers will know, is an Arabic word for community. whether you like it or not Muslims are a community. a community that is in the process of being completely taken over by a fanatic fringe. And it is because those of us in the silent, moderate majority refuse to take ownership that this has happened.
I went to graduate school and studied the idea of community. A community can be any group that has communal feeling--whether it is people stranded in an elevator or people who have sworn a blood oath, or people who are bound by a thousand/fifteen hundred years of faith, culture and civilization.
So, yes, Muslims are an ummah; and I say that as a done my-time-in-the-leadership Progressive Muslim.
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