T T UMMA — M  R? 575 Blackwell Publishing, Ltd. Oxford, UK MUWO The Muslim World 0027-4909 © 2005 Hartford Seminary October 2005 95 4 ORIGINAL ARTICLE The Transnational Umma Myth or Reality The Muslim World Volume 95 October 2005 The Transnational Umma — Myth or Reality? Examples from the Western Diasporas Garbi Schmidt Danish National Institute of Social Research Copenhagen, Denmark The Umma as Vision and Practice I n the mid-1990s, a frequent site for my ongoing research of Muslims in Chicago was a small student room at the University of De Paul. At most other campuses in the city Muslims simply organized as “MSAs” — Muslim Student Associations — but not at De Paul. Four capital letters cut from bright colored paper and forming the word “UMMA” hung at the door. Members knew that UMMA was an acronym for “United Muslims Moving Ahead,” and most were probably also familiar with another and more widely spread implication of the word: The community of believers in Islam. The umma concept has long historical, theological and theoretical implications. It is a central component in Friday prayers and in Islamic studies literature — or a part of every student of Islam’s academic jargon. In many ways the scholarly use of the umma concept is a means by which we frame a particular niche of research and make it distinguishable from others. In this article I want to discuss the concept’s implications in a current, transnational setting, as a means of capturing a possible fragment of transnational religious visions and practices. What intrigues me is the apparent strong consensus between believers, researchers and even politicians within secular Westerns nation states that the umma in today’s world is truly transnational. Although the idea is enchanting, it needs further scrutiny, based on the analysis of empirical data. Do young American Muslims, for example, network with Muslims in other Western settings as a result of shared religious convictions, and, if so, what is the fabric of such networks?