The ideal of the ummah is neither ‘everything’ nor ‘nothing’. It might be helpful to look at it on three levels: from the level of the state, ‘community’, and individual.
On the level of states and international politics, the ideal of Islamic solidarity is frequently undercut by the cold realities of realpolitik. There are national allegiances, ethnic differences, religious and sectarian distinctions. Material interests, strategic calculations, and domestic pressures often differentiate Muslim-majority states from one another as much as they connect them. The modern international system, organised around sovereign nation-states, has therefore in many ways constrained the political realisation of the ummah as a unified geopolitical entity.
Yet as an idea it remains powerful. This is especially on the level of the ‘community’. In some ways in the modern period it became a more powerful ideal, even as states narrowly pursued national interests. Pilgrimage to Mecca, which enhances that sense of community, witnessed a tenfold increase in numbers attending between the 1920s and 1970s. The communications revolution - press, radio, television, internet - has brought global news to individual Muslims at a much faster pace. It has also enabled the diffusion of Islamic knowledge at a greater rate.
Of course the reality is one of ample difference and dissension within the Muslim community. But this only makes the idea of unity more potent - at least at particular junctures. The awareness of disunity has been expressed by many, not least by the sensitive thinker Muhammad Iqbal. Take an Iqbal Persian quatrain, translated by Mustansir Mir:
Muslims are at war with one another
And in their hearts they harbour only schism;
They cry out if someone else pulls a brick
Out of a mosque which they themselves shun
In certain historical circumstances, this yearning for a lost unity can be transformed into powerful calls for political action. The Pakistan movement in the 1940s serves as a prime example. Historian David Gilmartin has convincingly shown that during the 1946 provincial elections, the Muslim League successfully projected the idea of Pakistan as the embodiment of Muslim unity, standing in direct contradistinction to fitna (disorder) and the actually existing disunity among Muslims. This is the ideal in action.
On the level of the individual, the foundational pillars of Islam actively reinforce this deep sense of solidarity. Muslims are urged to pray as a community, lining up in neat, egalitarian rows, with the final act of Namaaz being to turn to one's neighbours and offer salaam. Zakaat is fundamentally designed to support the broader community. Muslims fasting during Ramadan often feel a profound, visceral connection around the shared experience of privation. And while the Hajj is a massive communal event, on an individual spiritual level, it serves as the ultimate reminder of the absolute equality of all believers before Allah.
As the late Shahab Ahmed put it in his extraordinary book, What is Islam?:
“Simply, Muslims have not only what the editors of a volume on Cultural Diversity and Islam have plainly called “a sense of universal human solidarity” across geographical space; Muslims have also what William A. Graham has termed “a sense of connectedness” across historical time. Two Muslim strangers—whatever their respective levels of creedal commitment and praxial observance—one from Mali and the other from Indonesia, meeting one another in the streets of Manhattan, experience a dimension of their encounter in and as their presence in a distinct and particular space—which is the space of Islam.”
Ultimately, the picture is complex because human beings are complex. As Riazul Islam - who belonged to the first generation of Pakistani historians - aptly noted: “it is easy to die for one’s faith but difficult to live up to its ideals.” The enduring relevance of the ummah lies precisely in this tension: not as a fully realised political order, but as a guiding ethical ideal.
