The Transnational Umma - Myth or Reality

THE TRANSNATIONAL UMMA — MYTH OR REALITY?

The Transnational Umma— Myth or Reality?Examples from the WesternDiasporas

Garbi SchmidtDanish National Institute of Social ResearchCopenhagen, Denmark

The Umma as Vision and Practice

In the mid-1990s, a frequent site for my ongoing research of Muslims inChicago was a small student room at the University of De Paul, At mostother campuses in the city Muslims simply organized as "MSAs" — Muslim

Student Associations — but not at De Paul. Eour capital letters cut from brightcolored paper and forming the word "UMMA" hung at the door. Membersknew that UMMA was an acronym for "United Muslims Moving Ahead," andmost were probably also familiar with another and more widely spreadimplication of the word: The community of believers in Islam.

The umma concept has long historical, theological and theoreticalimplications. It is a central component in Friday prayers and in Islamic studiesliterature — or a part of every student of Islam's academic jargon. In manyways the scholarly use of the umma concept is a means by which we frame aparticular niche of research and make it distinguishable from others. In thisarticle I want to discuss the concept's implications in a current, transnationalsetting, as a means of capturing a possible fragment of transnational religiousvisions and practices. What intrigues me is the apparent strong consensusbetween believers, researchers and even politicians within secular Westernsnation states that the umma in today's world is truly transnational. Althoughthe idea is enchanting, it needs further scrutiny, based on the analysis ofempirical data. Do young American Muslims, for example, network withMuslims in other Western settings as a result of shared religious convictions,and, if so, what is the fabric of such networks?

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Political scientist Suzanne Hoeber Rudolph describes religiouscommunities as "among the oldest of the transnationals; Sufi orders. Catholicmissionaries, and Buddhist monks carried work and praxis across vast spacesbefore those spaces became nation-states or even states."' The concept of a"world religion" (such as Islam) implies that religion as concept andcommunity is not necessarily confined by national borders but is capable ofpenetrating and accenting them. We know that Muslims live in countries asdiverse as Indonesia, Egypt, Nigeria, France and Brazil. And we know thatIslam has spread by far more rudimentary means than missionaries and "wars.In today's world, transnational Islam is predominantly associated withmigration, as when individuals and families leave the "old" Islamic world andsettle down in North America and Europe.

That transnational Islamic practices in many instances, therefore, areembedded in network relations between migrant settings and departedhomelands is not surprising. Individuals and organizations send money backto fund mosques, schools or charity work in the countries they left. Suchtransnational activities can be described as diasporic, religious activitiesmaintain network ties between migrants and the countries they or theirforbearers left, secure influence in the homelands, and transfer symbols ofloyalty. Among Muslims living in the West, transnational practices based onreligious loyalties within these regions are frequently rooted in diasporicpreferences, as when Turkish mosques in Germany, Switzerland and Francehelp Turks in Italy buy an apartment for their prayers.^ In the United States,the recurring reference among Muslims to "the ethnic mosque" and theongoing critique of solidarities based on ethnic rather than religious affiliationsfurther illustrate the influence of diasporic imaginations on religious practicesand alliances.'

The American example clearly shows that other aspirations for communityand transnational practices are developing among Muslims in the West. Withinsegments of these communities, not least among the young, the vision of atransnational umma as transcending diasporic ties and existing by its ownmeans and rights is common. Frequently, Muslims argue that electroniccommunication facilitates the realization of this umma. In the mid-1990s, thefollowing posting appeared on one of the period's most vigorous MuslimInternet forums in the United States. The writer was hopeful that the Internet'sgrowing accessibility created the ultimate means to attract fellow believersacross ethnic lines and create a globally vibrant and cohesive community:

One frontier that can serve to link up the Ummah is cyberspace, or theInternet. We may ask ourselves if cyberspace is the means by which wecan revitalize the Islamic way of life. I firmly believe that the Internet canbe used to organize a society based on Qur'anic principles. . . . This is a

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prime way to reach out to our brothers and sisters and galvanize us intoan active citizenship of the Ummah, thus strengthening us individuallyand collectively as well as preserving our Islamic heritage and ideals,"*

Similar perceptions frequently echo within the research community. Whenpolitical scientist Peter Mandaville, for example, states that "we can speak ofthe Internet as allowing Muslims to create a new form of imagined community,or reimagined umma"^ the argumentation sounds similar to how Muslimclusters on the Internet present themselves and envision their task. The visionis undoubtedly fueled by calls for a return to genuine Islamic practices, foundacross contexts outside the Internet. Among my own informants — youngMuslim activists in the United States, Sweden and Denmark — a non-cultural,pristine interpretation of Islam is argued independent of regional or any otherboundaries. Many argue that ethnic and national preferences and habits standinferior to Islamic perceptions of identity and community, and they presentthemselves as Muslims before anything else. They see shared core valuesand practices as embedded in a well-scrutinized, genuine and "ummatic"vision of Islam,

At meetings, verse 49:13 in the Qur'an is frequently cited as a normativeargument for this position: "We created you as nations and tribes so that youmay know each other," According to my informants, divine decree asks morefrom believers than simple awareness of one another. Rather, the verse —including its continuation that "the most honoured of you in the sight of Allahis (he who is) the most righteous of you" — stresses not only aspects ofequality, but asserts that nationality and ethnicity are irrelevant to a correctIslamic self-perception and practice, Islam as a creed includes everyone, andit calls for solidarity between believers in all parts of the world.

In our analyzing of possible manifestations of a transnational umma, Iemphasize the importance of distinguishing between two levels — vision andpractice. The umma is, above all, an idea or vision: The conviction to take partin a border-crossing community that includes believers worldwide and raisesambitions for what the believers ought to be — unified, innately connected,characterized by profound mutual loyalty and the practice of high moralstandards. Within certain disciplines (e,g,, Islamic studies, political science,transnational studies), a recurring conceptualization of the transnational ummais that of an "imagined" or "reimagined" community, Benedict Andersondescribes the imagined character of the modern nation as meeting thefollowing conditions: that although "members of even the smallest nations willnever know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, , , in the mind of each lives the image of their communion,"^ However,despite the attractiveness of this image, a question arises as to how people goabout transforming and vitalizing imagination into transnational community

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practice, for example through what political scientist Thomas Faist calls"generalized forms of reciprocity and diffuse forms of solidarity."^

A central empirical task of this article is to explore possible implications ofthe umma beyond that of vision, and to see if we may trace transnational waysof being — the various acts through which people live their lives acrossborders^ — which, driven by a universalistic interpretation of the faith, linkbelievers across one or more national contexts. Young Muslims claim theiridentity to be bordedess, all-inclusive. But do their habits and transnationalpractices reflect an accomplishment of these ambitions? The article testsaspects of the prevailing paradigm of the transnational umma. Although thecall for universalism and unity among Muslims apparently appeals to a globallydispersed audience, ideology by itself does not equate to existing transnationalpractices.

My own journey into investigating the transnational umma as vision andpractice began in the late 1990s when I returned to Denmark from my doctoralfieldwork setting in Chicago. Listening to young Muslims' self-presentationsand religiously founded views on issues such as the role of women, ecologyand human rights in my native homeland, I found their arguments similar tothose of young Muslims in the United States. The question remained whetherthere was any direct or indirect link between such formulations. How and towhat extent did young people in various Western settings inspire each otherand correspond about religiously relevant topics? In the fall of 2000 I began aresearch project to investigate religious activism among young Muslims in theUnited States, Denmark and Sweden. From early on, one of the project'sambitions was to investigate if and how my informants and the organizationsthey represented participated in transnational activities with young Muslimsin other national contexts as a result of shared ideas of religious identityand community. The project has so far included fieldwork in four largemetropolitan areas: Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Greater Stockholm andCopenhagen. Data from these four settings is used in the analyses of thisarticle.

I offer three examples of transnational activities, events andconsiderations, each attached to one of the national settings of my fieldwork.A particular task of this article is to investigate how aspects of American Islamintersect with a transnational social field or space — "the combination of ties,positions in networks and organizations that reach across the borders ofmultiple states"' — based on religious identification, both in the sense of howand if young American Muslims partake in transnational Islamic practices, andhow and if American Islam is of any relevance to the transnational practices ofyoung Muslims within other Western contexts. Consequently, the focus ismildly angled towards the ways in which Islamic practices within one national

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context affect ideas and practices in broader transnational networks. This angleis extremely relevant given the influence of current global power structures,including the dominance of certain nations, on the appearances oftransnationalism. The article ends with specific analysis of the impact ofAmerican Islam within transnational social fields, and a more general analysisof the broader implications, extent, and character of the overall transnationalummatic practices to which the empirical material points.

Three Localities, Three Examples

Example IMuslims in Sweden: Aiysha and tbe California Dream

Aiysha really wanted to go to the United States, Not to work or to settledown. Not because she wanted to marry a man there, or because she was fondof the country. Aiysha wanted to go to the Zaytuna Institute: an Islamicacademy located in California,'" This was her main ambition in the fall of 2000,when I met her in the Swedish city of Uppsala, located north of the capital,Stockholm, Aiysha was a prominent member of the local youth organizationMUFU (Muslimska Ungdomsforeningen i Uppsala; the Muslim YouthOrganization in Uppsala), and mostly attended the Friday evening seminars,where young Muslims discussed aspects of their faith, Aiysha stood out asvocal and critical, not necessarily accepting the religious interpretations of herpeers, and certainly not if they countered her feminist perspectives on Islam,Like most others in the organization, she expressed a high level of confidencein her Islamic identity. She stressed (as is frequently done within currentIslamic discourses) that Islam was her personal choice, based on scrutiny andencounters with the secular youth culture that surrounded her.

Transnational practices were parts of Aiysha's family life from her earlychildhood, when her family fied Somalia and settled in Sweden. Some familymembers now lived in other parts of the Western world, A brother whom shehas not seen for ten years lives in Minnesota and had never visited his familyin Sweden, Parts of Aiysha's ambition to visit Zaytuna dovetailed with herplans to visit her brother in December 2000, Knowing that I had lived in theStates and even planned myself to go to California, she often asked mequestions about airline ticket prices and getting around in the States, But whatwas it about Zaytuna and going abroad that attracted her so much? Why didshe not pursue a deeper understanding of her religion somewhere in Europeor the Middle East?

Her family connection with the United States is one way to explain theease by which that country became a natural part of the social field in which

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she imagined herself. But the fabric and activities of Muslim youthorganizations in metropolitan Stockholm added to her transnational aspirationsand affected their direction. In October 2000, a two-day "Deen Intensive"conference, attracting young people from most of the region, was held in oneof Stockholm's suburbs. One of the invited speakers was Sheikh Mohamed al-Yaqoubi, born in Syria but a frequent visitor to Western countries. Al-Yaqoubihad worked for years in Sweden, and was one of the founding members ofthe Swedish Islamic Academy." After visiting the United States for the first timein 1997, he became a frequent teacher and speaker at conferences and eventsthat the Zaytuna Institute organized.'^ When I asked young Muslims whyspeakers from outside Sweden — sometimes coming from other continents —were invited to participate in national conferences, they often referred to theirlimited access to Islamic knowledge and scholars in Sweden. To learn moreabout "genuine" Islam in an "authentic" way, they felt forced to look outsidefor scholarly authorities.

A Swedish connection with Zaytuna appeared to date back to the mid-1990s. One of the more prominent spokespersons of the national umbrellaorganization SUM (Sveriges Unga Muslimer; Sweden's Young Muslims), wellknown for his fascination with Sufism, started referring to the founder ofZaytuna, Hamza Yusuf, on postings on the Swedish Internet community SFCM(Sveriges Forenade CyberMuslimer; The United Cyber-Muslims of Sweden) in1998. Aiysha's fascination with both Sheikh Yusuf and Sheikh al-Yaqoubi wasobvious. She proudly told me that after the Deen Intensive Conference she hadsat down face-to-face with al-Yaqoubi for ten minutes to ask him questions.When she and another female member of MUFU one morning duringRamadan discussed whether a man's taking a second wife was acceptable,Aiysha laughingly declared that her dream was to marry Hamza Yusuf one day.Transnational aspirations, connections and imagination weie mingled with desire.

I do not know whether Aiysha ever succeeded in traveling to Zaytuna,or if the dream remained a dream. When I left Sweden in the middle ofDecember, Aiysha was still undecided. One major obstacle was her being astudent on a limited budget. No matter the outcome, Aiysha exemplified thetransnational connections in which her community engaged. The communityinvited speakers from other countries, and at meetings in MUFU, teachingmaterial often consisted of downloaded texts produced by scholars andinstitutions abroad. Connections materialized within local life spheres, as whenal-Yaqoubi sat in his white robe on the floor of the suburban Swedish mosque.Transnational experiences and practices were integrated in the everyday life ofthis community — how members gained and shared knowledge of theirreligion, whom they saw as religious authorities, and what Islamic institutionsthey found accessible and worth visiting.

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Example IIMuslims in the United States: A Nucleus of Transnational Inspiration

Whereas my fieldwork setting in Sweden gave strong indications oftransnational religious and community-oriented practices, the scene lookedquite different in the United States, My interviews with young AmericanMuslims gave little proof of transnational engagement with other Muslims,driven by the idea of a global umma. Contacts were mainly based on familyand kinship ties, as when people visited Syria or Lebanon during summervacations. In contrast to young Muslims in my Scandinavian fieldwork settings,none of my young informants in the United States participated in Muslimconferences overseas. In a few cases, I heard of and got to know people whowent to the Middle East for a formal Islamic education. When I asked peopleif they used the Internet to stay in touch with other Muslims based on religiousconviction, the answer was generally negative.

The impact of a universalistic, border-crossing interpretation of Islam wasmainly applied within local settings as a device to attract new believers to thefaith, or to demonstrate Islam's egalitarian character, for example to African-Americans, Within metropolitan contexts young Muslims on and off campusesreferred to an ummatic vision as a means invigilating social activism (e,g,,school programs for children, prison programs) and unified political efforts.Many were frustrated by the ethnic fragmentation of mosques, which they sawas a token of "cultural Islam" and the paralyzed, stagnant attitude of the oldergeneration(s). According to my respondents, ethnic fragmentation wasIslamically inappropriate and problematic if the community wanted a voicewithin the American mainstream.

Although young Muslims in America appear disinclined to engage intransnational networks and practices with fellow believers in other Westerncountries, aspects of Muslim-American activism are by no means disconnectedfrom transnational circulation of ideas, people and sense of community.Rather, trails of Muslim-American Islam appear to have a notable influence onMuslim communities elsewhere. One strong influence can be found within thefield of knowledge production, Islamic scholars based in the United Statesparticipate in conferences organized by young Scandinavian Muslims, andyoung Scandinavian Muslims refer to American Islamic scholars (such asHamza Yusuf), arguing for "authentic" ways to perceive Islamic conduct andidentity. Another influence is that of imitation, as when Swedish Muslims in thespring of 2000, following a group rape (by immigrant youth in Stockholm) thatstrengthened Islamophobic sentiments within the major population, arguedthat the time had come for an establishment of a Swedish "CAIR" (Council ofAmerican-Islamic Relations), an organization with considerable success in

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America and beyond." My point here is that various aspects of AmericanIslam are integrated in the social economy and transactions that take placeamong Muslims on a transnational scale. Both in terms of institutionalforms and religious authority, the United States (together with other Englishspeaking settings such as Canada and the United Kingdom) fill out gaps in thecommunity fabric and functions of Muslim communities in countries such asDenmark and Sweden.

The impact of Muslim American knowledge production and communityevents is strengthened by the internationally dominant role the U.S. plays as asuperpower, and the growing impact of the English language. As pointed outby J0rgen S. Nielsen, English has become the lingua franca of the worldtoday, including that of many Muslims.''' The dominance of English creates acommon language that Muslims can use when sharing information acrossborders and underlines the existence of certain power centers of discourse. Itis here that trails of transnationalism intersect with trails of globalization, as thelatter produces hierarchies among nation-states that influence transnationalpractices and ideas.'^

One particular event taking place in the United States illustrated the impactof this nation on transnational manifestations of the umma and how theummatic vision could generate practical expressions of solidarity andidentification. During the days and weeks after September 11, 2001,1 followedfour Muslim Internet-based discussion lists in the United States, Denmark andSweden, three of them with countrywide membership. Among Muslims in allthree nations, reactions to the terrorist attack were posted within hours,producing hectic activities such as the production of press alerts andarrangements for public demonstrations for peace. During the next weeks andmonths, members of the four lists appeared to go through similar sentimentsof fear, self-questioning, anger and apprehension of a universal antagonismdirected towards Muslims, illustrated by a frequent circulation of conspiracytheories. Although the circulation of documents — newspaper articles,interviews, links to websites, etc. — appeared disconnected and diffuse, it wasobvious that participants, regardless of context, experienced the event andwhat followed as directly targeting them as an international community.Suffering became central to their understanding of an ummatic identity.Undoubtedly, post-9/11 reactions taking place within the national contexts inwhich the members lived intensified this experience. Violent attacks againstMuslims and Muslim institutions, such as mosques in cities like Copenhagen,Chicago, and Stockholm, showed that even outside Muslim circles, the idea ofa transnational Islamic community connected across borders was strong.'^Muslims living in the contexts to which I had access shared a sensation ofsuffering and misrepresentation, among others, produced by outsiders' views

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of Muslims per se as a threat to Western secular democracies. When being puton the margin of Western national communities, Muslims sought refuge in thenotion of a common transnational community, according to which they actedas representatives in their local environments and as monitors of informationto one another,'^

Example IIIMuslims in Denm.ark: Changing Languages and Changing TransnationalSocial Eields

The events of 9/11 had noticeable implications for how Muslims outsidethe United States came to envisage themselves. Of particular interest to thepresent study, the event affected linguistic practices in the transnational socialfield. In Denmark, the massive influx of English written material in the wakeof the terrorist attacks changed the policies of the country's most acclaimedMuslim Internet foaim, the DFC (Danmarks Forenede CyberMuslimer; DanishUnited CyberMuslims), DFC's administrator had for several years insisted thatall postings be in Danish only, but after 9/11 he allowed postings in otherlanguages. The character of the event and its location in a web of globalrelations made maintaining the Danish restriction impossible. Nearly four yearslater, a substantial part of the postings on DFC either quote or refer to Englishwritten texts. Language is therefore more than a means of information transferbetween agents: It broadens or narrows community frameworks, therebydetermining what actors are included in chains of information and whatinformation is considered relevant to a communal whole,'*

As in the United States and Sweden, young Muslims in Denmark share auniversalistic vision of an Islamic identity and what the umma should be.Although my informants see a local enactment of the ummatic vision as theirfirst priority and the transnational ummatic vision as an ultimate goal to bepursued, they engage in transnational practices with other Muslims, The useof English testifies to this integration of community practices. Further, theDanish case exemplifies how young Muslims in Western contexts rebel againstthe diasporic transnational practices of the parental generation by insteadprioritizing universalistic transnational practices. When more than a hundredmembers of the Minhaj al-Quran (an organization rooted in Pakistan but withstrong ties to migrant communities elsewhere) left the organization in the fallof 2003, their decision was based on a deep dissatisfaction with the mother-organization's diasporic preferences, which the young saw as counter to"genuine" Islamic practices. Following the break with Minhaj, a new youthorganization, Muslims in Dialogue (Muslimer i Dialog) was founded, MIDinvited Islamic scholars from other Western countries to speak at national

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conferences, and arranged two well-attended study trips to the Muslimcountries of Turkey and Syria. Although this example is from Denmark, itpoints to developments with possible implications for all Western Muslims.Even though informants frequently present a transnational umma as a vision,widespread universalistic interpretations of Islam may encourage people toreconsider and redirect their transnational alliances.

Concluding RemarksThis article has shown the role that American Islam plays within

transnational fields shared by young Muslims in the West, using empiricalexamples from Sweden and Denmark. Within such transnational fields,American Islam appears particularly influential in areas of knowledgeproduction. Scholars based in the United States receive invitations fromMuslims based in Scandinavia to give talks at national conferences, and theirsermons and speeches are distributed there as representing Islam in itsgenuine and universalistic form and applying to the lives that Muslims leadacross contexts. Similarly, Muslims in Scandinavia frequently see AmericanIslamic institutions as convincing models for imitation. American Islam standsin a powerful position compared to interpretations of Islam elsewhere.

Although it is impossible to give any reliable estimate of the proportion oftexts, articles, web links, etc. distributed in English among ScandinavianMuslims, the distribution is substantial. When the Danish Internet forum DFCdecided to allow the submission of emails in non-Danish languages, the resultwas not postings in a myriad of languages but rather an intensified sharing ofemails in the language that most members understand: English. Although a textwritten in English is not necessarily a text written in the United States, theknowledge and adaptation of ideas, interpretation, authority and institutionalforms produced in that country spreads transnationally more easily because ofthe global prominence of the English language.

This article has also shown the different ways in which transnationalinteractions between Muslims in the United States and in Scandinavia takeplace. Some interactions involve personal encounters, as when Aiysha becameinterested in studying Islam at the California-based Zaytuna Institute after ashaykh affiliated with that institute visited Sweden. Other transnationalinteractions are less tangible and less often based on direct personal contact.In all the contexts in which I have conducted fieldwork, young Muslimsreferred to the Internet as a major means through which they gainedknowledge about their religion. The point is that although actors withincyberspace may be invisible to one another, they still interact. Cross-contextualreactions appearing after 9/11 exemplify these interactions, and furtherillustrate the difficulty of tracking down the networks, ties and knots that bind

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transnational internet-based interaction together. If we want to betterunderstand the premises by which transnational identity formation and politicstake place, we need a deeper investigation into this methodological problem.

The article has mainly focused on the transnational interaction in whichyoung Muslims engage. Much of the cross-contextual interaction of this groupcenters on knowledge production, which supports the specific forms of Islamicpractices young Muslims participate in locally. Although the transnational tableis not serving an unlimited array of dishes, it both allows and encouragesarticulations of lay authority and the rights of individuals to interpret, whichthe young practice as "their" Islam, Sheikhs and 'ulama' are still central agents,but are carefully chosen and invited to participate in transnational activitiesaccording to what the young find to answer their needs and expectations. Howthis transnational use of scholars affects the role that locally mosque basedauthorities play and how it affects diasporic articulations of authority arequestions that need substantial investigation.

Interestingly, young Muslims appear to underestimate their transnationalfaith-based practices. One possible reason is that they see the umma mainlyas a religious ideal, a vision, not an accomplished fact. The umma is whatpeople aspire to be part of, "a society based on Qur'anic principles," as thequote from the American Internet list expresses it. As a religious vision, theumma is one of the building blocks of the ongoing religious project ofindividuals and communities — one that, due to its mythological implications,has never been thoroughly completed. The umma, with one possibleexception, remains a construct of the future. As Muslim reactions to the eventsof 9/11 illustrate, the feelings of communal suffering created here-and-nowexperiences of the umma. Suffering, too, can be a religious ideal, one that maybe taken as proof of a genuine Islamic identity: It is exactly when Muslims seekto abide by the will of God that they face suppression and persecution. Whenthey suffer together, the ideal of belonging to a coherent religious communityis vitalized for shorter or longer periods of time. Under the distress of suffering,their desire creates a temporary umma.

From a theoretical perspective then, can we validly use the concept of theumma as a term for transnational Muslim practices? I believe that the examplesin this article show that we should use the concept with caution and with cleardistinctions between the levels of vision and practice. Whereas the academiccommunity may simply understand the umma as a means of conceptualizinga religious community in the here and now, the term to the believer includesthe dimension of "what ought to be," The research task is to illuminate thedynamics between vision and practices — to see how transnational practicesinspire new ways of interpreting the umma and how visions of the ummaaffect and eventually change the directions and content of transnational

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practices. But while doing so, we must be aware that our informants do notnecessarily see the transnational practices in which they and their peersengage as ummatic, and that widespread universalistic ideals of a genuineIslamic identity, in themselves, do not prove that vision has translated intopractice.

Endnotes1. Suzanne Hoeber Rudolph, "Introduction: Religion, States and Transnational Civil

Society," in Suzanne Hoeber Rudolph and John Piscatori (eds.). Transnational Religion andFading 5totes (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1997), 1.

2. Stefano Allievi, "Islam in the Public Space: Social Networks, Media andNeo-Communities," in Stefano Allievi and Jorgen S. Nielsen (eds.), Muslim Networksand Transnational Communities in and across Europe (Leiden: Brill 2003), 23.

3. Garbi Schmidt, Islam in Urban America.^ Philadelphia: Temple University Press,2004), 168-171.

4. Faraz Fareed Rabbani. "Do you feel trapped here?" Email sent to the Internet listMSA-L, February 20, 1995.

5. Peter Mandaville, "Digital Islam: Changing the Boundaries of ReligiousKnowledge?" in ISIM Newsletter, March 1999.

6. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso 1991), 6.7. Thomas Faist, "The Transnational Turn in Migration Research: Perspectives for the

Study of Politics and Polity," in Maja Povrzankovic (ed.). Transnational Spaces: DisciplinaryPerspectives (Malmo: Malmy University 2004), 20-21.

8. Nina Glick Schiller, "Transnationality," in David Nugent and Joan Vincent (eds.),A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics, (New York: Blackwell Publishers, 2004), 458.

9. Faist 2004, 17.10. www.zaytuna.org.11. http://www.svenskaislamiska.org/12. http://www.lightstudy.org/shkmuhammad.htm; http://www.lightstudy.org.13. For more details, see email thread on SFCM starting February 11, 2000 on the

subject "Stamning ang. valdtakt-islam uttalande" (feelings about rape-Islam announcement).14. J0rgen S. Nielsen, "Transnational Islam and the Integration of Islam in Europe,"

Paper presented at the Second Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting.Florence, March 21-25, 200, 17.

15. Glick Schiller 2004:465.16. See e.g. http://eumc.eu.int/eumc/material/pub/anti-islam/collection/Sweden.pdf

& http://antiracisme.fgov.be/raxen/documents/Synthesis-report_en.pdf17. That it has become important to refer to a wide transnational range of Muslim

reactions to the terrorist attacks is illustrated by postings on the Internet. E.g. Sheila Musaji,"Muslim Reactions to September 11 and Terrorism, "in The American Muslim, September-October, 2002, Internet: http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/2002sept_comments.php?id=39_0_l4_30_C; and "Muslim responses to September 11,"Belie/net, Internet: http://www.beliefnet.eom/story/l 1 l/story_l 1121_1 .html#cont.

18. Also Garbi Schmidt, "Construction Identity, Constructing Community: YoungMuslims in the West and the Transnational Impact of the Internet," in Goran Larsson (ed.).Religious Minorities in the Age of Information (forthcoming).

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The Transnational Umma - Myth or Reality