By Dr. Nayyer Ali

July 29, 2005

The Ummah is Not a Tribe

The London bombings and their aftermath have shone a spotlight on how Muslims perceive the world. The standard explanation offered is that Muslims are “angry”, and “outraged” over the sufferings of other Muslims, and this anger leads some to “snap” and do crazy things. If only the West would stop oppressing the Muslims, this anger would go away and suicide bombing would stop.
To non-Muslims, this is all rather perplexing. Why should British Pakistanis get so exercised over the status of Iraq? What does that have to do with Pakistan? Why should Saudi Muslims volunteer to blow themselves up over the Palestinians? Why should Indonesian Muslims get involved in a bomb plot against Australian civilians (the Bali bombings in 2002)? If Christians are oppressed in a Muslim country, European or American Christians do not “snap”. In fact they don’t seem to care very much.
The answer lies in the Muslim notion of Ummah. We are all part of one community, and Muslims view their fellow believers as brothers and sisters. We are taught to be as concerned about the fate of a Muslim on the other side of the planet as we are about our own family.
This notion of Ummah is very powerful. In theory it would affect the very foreign policy of a Muslim country. Some Muslims take the notion of Ummah to mean that all majority Muslim nations should merge into a single country united under a Khalifa. At a minimum, it means that Muslims should show concern about the status of all Muslims everywhere, and not just their fellow citizens in the country they live in.
The problem begins when Muslims misunderstand what Ummah means. The Ummah is not the purpose of Islam. Defending the Ummah is not the highest goal a Muslim should strive for. Defeating the enemies of the Ummah is not a pillar of the faith.
But the Jihadis and the Al-Qaeda supporters do not realize this. For them, defending the Ummah and smiting its enemies or perceived oppressors is the purpose of Islam. In that name, any violence becomes justified. Anyone anywhere who hurts Muslims is fair game. In this worldview, the Ummah is always assumed to be right, and its enemies are wrong. No room for discussion, no shades of gray, and no possibility that Muslims themselves are contributing to the problem.
What Al-Qaeda has done is to transform the Ummah into a tribe. The code of the tribe is very simple. You must avenge any slight to any member of the tribe. It is not only permissible, but it is your duty to do so. This applies even if the portion of the tribe that suffered a hurt provoked it or deserved it in some way. There is no sense of justice in this equation. My tribe right or wrong.
But Ummah is not tribe. Ummah is a community who believe that the paramount virtue is justice, even when it requires the believer to act against his tribe or his family or his self. The values of the tribe and the values of the Muslim Ummah are completely opposed to each other. Muslims in the Ummah should hold themselves to very high standards of right and wrong, so high that the rest of the world looks at us with admiration, not disgust. We should exhort our fellow Muslims to do what is right and to avoid what is wrong. The shedding of innocent blood on behalf of the Ummah is unacceptable. I would rather lose a war with just means than win with unjust means.
The Muslim world must set its own house in order and expel the proponents of this tribal mentality from our midst. It is not in our own interest to tolerate them. If we wish to foster the expansion of our religion, it must come through gaining the respect of the world. The suicide bombers bring only the opposite. Comments can reach me at Nali@socal.rr.com.

 

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