Ummah Consciousness: Collective Community Engagement Among Muslims in the United States

Muslims in the United States have become one of the most politically salient minority groups since the advent of 9/11, yet we have a limited understanding of what motivates their political engagement. Current political participation does not offer a comprehensive understanding of what motivates the community-based political behavior of Muslims. I introduce ummah consciousness as a construct to identify what motivates the political engagement of Muslims in the U.S.

Ummah is a popular Arabic term for community that has been used as a common term in Muslim communities to cue Muslims to express commitment to Muslims across nation-states. I develop a theory and measure for ‘ummah consciousness’ to understand how belief in collective community influences political behavior. The emergence of commitment to the ummah (ummah consciousness) emerges from the 1860’s and Muslim elites utilizing this belief to organize in reaction to Muslim subjects being subjugated and racialized during colonization. Similar to that time period, Muslims in the U.S. have currently been at the forefront of political conversations and policy decisions like the 2016 ‘Muslim ban’ policy.

Drawing on an originally fielded and nationally representative survey of 1,000 Muslims in the United States, I find that Muslims who hold a higher sense of ummah consciousness are more likely to participate in communal-specific types of political participation. The findings highlight how this most current manifestation of racialization extends the political effects of having a sense of ummah consciousness within the United States. 

Click here to register for this Zoom event.

For more information on Nura Sediqe, please click here. 

Sponsored by the Political Science Department, Black Studies Program, Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, and the Creating Connections Consortium (C3)