[Islam&Muslim] The Muslim community(Umma) facing a pressing challenge

The Muslim community, also known as the umma, is everywhere. Muslims live, work, and thrive from China to NewYork, from Astralia to Canada. It's rare to find a place on this planet where Muslims haven't made their mark. This fact, though often overlooked, is really important for understanding modern Islam. Nowadays, Muslims moving around the world are changing both Islam itself and the global scene.

Many big issues facing modern Muslims come from having lots of French, British, Canadians, Germans, Dutch, and Australians in the community. Muslims are found in many roles worldwide, like teachers, scientists, doctors, lawyers, business people, farmers, athlete and factory workers. Their reactions to different places and diverse societies lead to fast changes within Muslim communities and sometimes cause big conflicts, both between Muslims and with their non-Muslim neighbors. This global experience of being Muslim has led to urgent talks about things like women's rights, human rights, religious diversity, tolerance, and freedom of speech.

Controversies about cartoons showing Muhammad are a good example of this. In 2006, a Danish newspaper called al-Jostens published these cartoons, which sometimes made Muslims very angry and led to them being published widely in the name of free speech. Similar things happened in the next ten years, with the worst being the deadly attacks on Charlie Hebdo's offices in Paris in 2015. The fact that these cartoons were published and the different reactions from Muslims show how global the Muslim community is.

The cartoons were first published because there are lots of Muslims in Europe, which caused big debates about whether Islam fits with European culture and politics. Some authors, like Ba't Yeor, talk about "Eurabia," where they think Europe is controlled by Islamic radicalism because people there don't see the threat Islam poses to freedom and European traditions. Even though lots of Muslims in Europe reacted to the cartoons, the strongest reactions often came from outside Europe. Most Muslims live in Asia, but there are also many Muslims on every continent. For example, Russia has over 14 million Muslims, although they don't live evenly across the country. China also has lots of Muslims, but we're not sure exactly how many.


* Talking about the languages Muslims speak, you can find a list of them on the website:
http://www.ethnologue.com

the world

 

Even though most Muslims live in Asia and Africa, more than half of them live in just eight countries where Arabic isn't the main language. This includes places like Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Iran, Turkey, and Egypt. It's surprising, but there are more Muslims who speak Indonesian, Bengali, or Urdu than those who speak Arabic. Also, many Muslims live in places with different religions, where they're often outnumbered.

For example, in India and China, Muslims sometimes feel threatened by the majority. Nigeria also has religious divisions, with about half of its people being Muslim, 40% Christian, and 10% animist. Lots of other countries with many Muslims, like Sudan, Lebanon, the Balkans, and Malaysia, have people from different ethnic and religious groups living together. So, many Muslims today don't live in places where most people are Muslim, but they live, work, and worship among people of other religions.

To sum up, the Muslim community, the Umma, is all over the world, facing challenges from globalization and living in different places. Muslims often find themselves as minorities and live in places with lots of problems. This paints a hard picture, so it's not surprising that many Muslims feel like they're in a tough spot. They've faced lots of troubles from things like European colonizers, Chinese communists, Hindu extremists, and oppressive governments, which stop them from living how they want, whether they're in places where most people aren't Muslim or in Muslim-majority countries. How should we address the current issues we’re facing?