Memories and visions of ummah: Reflections in relational solidarity

Abstract

We are four racialized diasporic Muslim women living on Turtle Island, with roots spanning India, Palestine, Panama, Trinidad, Malaysia, and beyond. We have been involved in activism and organizing, including with and for Muslim communities, for more than five decades combined. Our conversations and correspondence about Muslim pedagogies of solidarity provoked individual and collective reflection about what it means to create and sustain community. We were made in community and have made communities intentionally with others, Muslim or otherwise, who allow us to be more fully human. We are guided by Islamic teachings, as well teachings of justice and liberation rooted in different knowledge traditions. We are shaped too by the knowledge and ways of knowing offered by radical Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour engaged in the collective struggle for freedom on Turtle Island and in the wider world. As Muslims, we are called “to come to know one another” (Qur’an, 49:13, as cited in Nasr et al., 2015). We suggest that to do so requires us to confront patterns of internalized domination and internalized subordination that prevent us from being with and for one another. Such confrontation enables us to work collectively to dismantle interlocking systems of oppression that prevent us from being more fully human. In this multivocal reflective essay, we explore the relationship between community and solidarity by delving into our memories of ummah, Muslim community, our evolving understandings of ummah, and the relational solidarity that is necessary to establish ummah. A thread that weaves together our memories and visions of ummah is the ancient and futuristic practice of mothering.