Muslim World or Ummah? Origins, Content, and Evolution of Pan-Islamic Thought

While there are more than 50 Muslim majority nation-states, there are also more than a hundred million Muslims living as minorities in other states, which leads to the question: is there something called “the Muslim World”? Not only in journalism, but also in humanities and social science scholarship, it is still very common to refer to a civilizational and geopolitical unit called “the Muslim World” when comparable terms such as “the Christian World” and “the Buddhist World” do not have similar cache anymore. We rarely realize that the idea of “the Muslim World” emerged in the mid-19th century, and since then, it has been utilized by various political projects and religious discourses. This lecture critically discusses the political history of the idea of Muslim solidarity from the late 18th century to the present in order to better reflect on the current competing visions of “the Muslim World.”