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.
