Umma Quotes

In fact, she was both my first and second words: Umma, then Mom. I called to her in two languages. Even then I must have known that no one would ever love me as much as she would.

Those that trust no one, usually end up trusting the wrong person."-Umma to Midnight

How did the infant sent away from his family grow up to redefine the whole concept of family and tribe into something far larger: the umma, the people or the community of Islam?

Bu şehir ardından gelecek senin, aynı sokaklarda dolaşacaksın, aynı mahallelerde ihtiyarlaşacaksın, aynı evlerde kır düşecek saçlarına, bu şehirdir gidip gideceğin, başka bir yer umma.

Kama umefanya au umesema kitu kibaya na ukasema ukweli mbele ya mtu au ya watu, omba msamaha kupata tena kibali cha umma.

You had nightmares every night for a long time and screamed in Korean words, but we didn't know what they meant. I asked someone who knew Korean, and he said it was um-ma um-ma, the word for mom.

From the time of the birth of the madhabs around the second century until now, an overwhelming majority of the Umma (Muslim nation) has been following them. In fact, for hundreds of years, there was not a single Scholar worth the name except that he belonged to one of the madhabs including Al-Shaykh Ibn Taymiyya and his most famous student Ibn Al-Qayyim who were both followers of the Hanbali school.

The Islam of Muhammad banished the idea of supervision, of a police system of control. This explains the absence of clergy in Islam and the encouraging of all Muslims to get involved in understanding the written word. Individual responsibility came into play to balance the weight of aristocratic control, finally making it ineffective in an umma of believers whose behavior followed precise, internalized rules. Recognizing in women an inalienable will fitted into this scheme of making everyone individually responsible.

Most of the vendors’ faces are tanned and worn – so far from the dewy, white ideal that’s S.A.Y.’s standard. After so much time locked up in a K-pop trainee building, normal faces have become unusual to me. Unusual but beautiful. Interesting. Friendly. ‘You have such a lovely daughter,’ many of them say to Umma, and we bow our thanks.

Even as an infant, I felt the importance of my mother. She was the one I saw most, and on the dark edges of emerging consciousness I could already tell that she was mine. In fact, she was both my first and second words: Umma, then Mom. I called to her in two languages. Even then I must have known that no one would ever love me as much as she would.

What you’re calling a hobby could change his life. And if it doesn’t, that has to be okay. You have to forgive him. You’ve got to let people mess up and you’ve still got to help them. You have to talk to them and support them while they make decisions, even if they’re the wrong ones. That’s how people learn, mom. Umma-ni-kah.” Because you’re the mom.

Las mujeres de las primeras umma (comunidad) de Medina tomaban parte plenamente en la vida pública, y algunas de ellas, de acuerdo a la costumbre árabe, luchaban al lado de los hombres en el campo de batalla. No parece que entonces experimentaran el islam como una religión opresiva, aunque más tarde, como sucedió con el cristianismo, los hombres tomaron el control de la religión y la adaptaron al patriarcado dominante.

All this means that warfare against unbelievers until they either become Muslim or pay the jizya—the special tax on non-Muslims in Islamic law—“with willing submission” (Qur’an 9:29) is the Qur’an’s last word on jihad. Mainstream Islamic tradition has interpreted this as Allah’s enduring marching orders to the human race: The Islamic umma (community) must exist in a state of perpetual war with the non-Muslim world, punctuated only by temporary truces.

Those who are in federation with them” specifically included not only all the clans of the Aws and the Khazraj, whether or not they had formally accepted islam at that point, but also the Jewish tribes, named clan by clan. As monotheists, “the Jews are one community with the believers,” the document declared, again using the word umma. “Each must help the other against anyone who attacks the people of this document. They must seek mutual advice and consultation.

Omar directed the Umma for ten years, and during that time he set the course of Islamic theology, he shaped Islam as a political ideology, he gave Islamic civilization its characteristic stamp, and he built an empire that ended up bigger than Rome. Any one of these achievements could have earned him a place in a who’s who of history’s most influential figures; the sum of them make him something like a combination of Saint Paul, Karl Marx, Lorenzo di Medici, and Napoleon.

Si l’islam apparaît comme une religion contraignante à un certain nombre de nos contemporains, musulmans et non-musulmans confondus, c’est parce qu’il y a bien souvent dans leur esprit confusion entre les nécessités sociales propres à la umma et les principes religieux et spirituels qui gouvernent la foi. Or, cette dernière, nous l’avons dit, ne peut être qu’une libre adhésion du cœur. C’est de cette façon que « la distinction claire entre la vérité et l’égarement doit se faire »

Muslims form a global community (umma) united by a common belief and value system as decreed by God. Essential to this system is the recognition of the Qur’an as God’s final message to mankind revealed through His Prophet, Muhammad (ca. 571–632), via the archangel Gabriel. The vast differences in how Islam takes form arise because of the ways in which the Qur’anic text is interpreted by communities and cultures, each with their own trajectories of history, experience and understanding

Maana halisi ya falsafa ya 'Nitakuwa tayari kufungwa kwa ajili ya matatizo ya watu', au Falsafa ya Kufungwa, ni uvutano mkubwa uliopo kati ya Roho Mtakatifu na Roho wa Shetani kwa sisi wanadamu wote. Jambo lolote baya limtokealo mwanadamu husababishwa na Shetani na si Mungu na watu hupata matatizo kwa sababu ya kudharau miito ya mioyo yao wenyewe, au kudharau kile Roho Mtakatifu anachowambia. Unaweza kuvunja sheria kwa manufaa ya wengi kwani mibaraka haikosi maadui. Ukifungwa kwa kuvunja sheria kwa ajili ya manufaa ya wengi watu watakulaani lakini Mungu atakubariki. Kwa nguvu ya uwezo wa Roho Mtakatifu Mungu atamshinda Shetani kwa niaba yako. Tukijifunza namna ya kuwasiliana na Roho Mtakatifu hatutapata matatizo kwani Mungu anataka tuishi kwa amani katika siku zote alizotupangia, licha ya damu yetu kuwa chafu. Mtu anapokufa kwa mfano, Roho wa Shetani amemshinda Roho Mtakatifu na Roho Mtakatifu hatalipendi hilo kwa niaba ya Mungu. Ikitokea mtu akayashinda majaribu ya Shetani katika kipindi ambacho watu wote wameyashindwa; mtu huyo amebarikiwa na Mungu, ili aitumie mibaraka hiyo kuwaepusha wenzake na roho mbaya wa Shetani. Nikisema 'Kwa nguvu ya uwezo wa Roho Mtakatifu Mungu atamshinda Shetani kwa niaba yako' namaanisha, Roho Mtakatifu ana uwezo wake na Roho wa Shetani ana uwezo wake pia. Ukimshinda Roho wa Shetani uwezo wa Roho Mtakatifu umekuwa mkubwa kuliko uwezo wa Roho wa Shetani, na ukishindwa kumtii Roho Mtakatifu uwezo wa Roho wa Shetani umekuwa mkubwa kuliko uwezo wa Roho Mtakatifu, ilhali uwezo wa Mungu ni mkubwa kuliko wa Roho Mtakatifu na wa Roho wa Shetani kwa pamoja. Mungu humtumia Roho Mtakatifu kumlindia watoto wake ambao ni sisi dhidi ya Shetani … Kila akifanyacho Roho Mtakatifu hapa duniani ni kwa niaba ya Mungu, na tukimtii Roho Mtakatifu Mungu atamshinda Shetani kwa niaba yetu. Mtu anapofungwa kwa kutetea maslahi ya umma wewe unayemfunga umemtii Roho wa Shetani. Yule anayefungwa amemtii Roho Mtakatifu maana amebarikiwa, na mibaraka haikosi maadui.

So the question arose now, as it had in the wake of the Mongol holocaust: if the triumphant expansion of the Muslim project proved the truth of the revelation, what did the impotence of Muslims in the face of these new foreigners signify about the faith? With this question looming over the Muslim world, movements to revive Islam could not be extricated from the need to resurrect Muslim power. Reformers could not merely offer proposals for achieving more authentic religions experiences. They had to expound on how the authenticity they proposed would get history back on course, how their proposals would restore the dignity and splendor of the Umma, how they would get Muslims moving again toward the proper endpoint of history: perfecting the community of justice and compassion that flourished in Medina in the original golden moment and enlarging it until it included all the world. Many reformers emerged and many movements bubbled up, but all of them can sorted into three general sorts of responses to the troubling question. One response was to say that what needed changing was not Islam, but Muslims. Innovation, alterations, and accretions had corrupted the faith, so that no one was practicing the true Islam anymore. What Muslims needed to do was to shut out Western influence and restore Islam to its pristine, original form. Another response was to say that the West was right. Muslims had gotten mired in obsolete religious ideas; they had ceded control of Islam to ignorant clerics who were out of touch with changing times; they needed to modernize their faith along Western lines by clearing out superstition, renouncing magical thinking, and rethinking Islam as an ethical system compatible with science and secular activities. A third response was to declare Islam the true religion but concede that Muslims had certain things to learn from the West. In this view, Muslims needed to rediscover and strengthen the essence of their own faith, history and traditions, but absorb Western learning in the fields of science and technology. According to this river of reform, Muslims needed to modernize but could do so in a distinctively Muslim way: science was compatible with the Muslim faith and modernization did not have to mean Westernization.

Sunja, who’d been quiet, waiting for Noa to speak up, wiped her wet hands on her apron. “Can I go? Can we leave now?” She’d never left early before. “I’ll stay here and finish. You go. Hurry. I’ll be right there after I’m done.” Sunja reached for Noa’s hand. * Halfway down the street, Sunja shouted, “Mozasu!” and Noa looked up at her. “Umma, Aunt will bring him home,” he said calmly. She clutched his hand tighter and walked briskly toward the house. “You ease my mind, Noa. You ease my mind.” Without the others around, it was possible to be kind to her son. Parents weren’t supposed to praise their children, she knew this—it would only invite disaster. But her father had always told her when she had done something well; out of habit, he would touch the crown of her head or pat her back, even when she did nothing at all. Any other parent might’ve been chided by the neighbors for spoiling a daughter, but no one said anything to her crippled father, who marveled at his child’s symmetrical features and normal limbs. He took pleasure in just watching her walk, talk, and do simple sums in her head. Now that he was gone, Sunja held on to her father’s warmth and kind words like polished gems. No one should expect praise, and certainly not a woman, but as a little girl, she’d been treasured, nothing less. She’d been her father’s delight. She wanted Noa to know what

While recognizing that Muslims had ceased to function as a unified body and therefore assumed national status, he believed that after the achievement of real independence—even if it relied on the use of nationalism as a foundation for the struggle against colonialism—it was necessary to return to true Islamic beliefs, specifically the unity of the Muslim nation. Upon examination of some of his speeches delivered in the mid to late 1980s, it becomes clear that Dr. Ahmad was seeking ways to reconstitute the universal Umma, which had been reduced to an “abstract concept,” his opinion being that this would be brought about by a smaller group, who would actively enjoin the good and forbid the evil.

Khomeini espoused a militant religious doctrine rejecting not only the Middle Eastern political order, but also the contemporary international system since both perpetuated an unjust order imposed on the ‘oppressed’ Muslims by the ‘oppressive’ great powers. It was bound to be replaced by an Islamic world order in which the territorial nation-state would be transcended by the broader entity of the umma (or the universal Muslim community); and since Iran was the only country where the ‘Government of God’ had been established, it had the sacred obligation to serve as the core of the umma and a springboard for the worldwide dissemination of Islam’s holy message. As he put it: ‘We will export our revolution throughout the world … until the calls “there is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God” are echoed all over the world.

My first word was Korean: Umma. Even as an infant, I felt the importance of my mother. She was the one I saw most, and on the dark edge of emerging consciousness I could already tell that she was mine. In fact, she was both my first and second words: Umma, then Mom. I called to her in two languages. Even then I must have known that no one would ever love me as much as she would.

You like pajeon? [...] How does your umma make it?” Kyunghee asked; her tone was casual, though she held strong opinions about the ratio of scallions to shellfish.

When I got my official acceptance letter in the mail, Umma immediately pinned it to the fridge. She took down my old tests to make room. This letter deserved the entire metal canvas. It was the culmination of all my hard work, all my high school accomplishments. It was the thing I had desperately wanted so many moons ago. Now I don't even know why I'm here.

There’s a cracked vase on the side table next to the couch, the one Appa used to hate. Umma never let him throw it out because it was a gift from her mother, who passed away years ago. She runs her finger along the split, and I find myself wondering: Is it my father she’s remembering, or her mother?

Whether or not Islam ever becomes dominant in Western Europe or elsewhere in the former lands of Christendom, the wars will not end. Militant Islam will not go away with the death of bin Laden, or Arafat, or Saddam Hussein, or anyone else. It will clash increasingly with the weary secular powers that it blames for all the ills of the umma. No one can predict the features of the world that will emerge from these conflicts, except that it will be new, and that it will be difficult-unless there is some wondrous intervention from the Merciful One.

Umma is the opposite of every female that I saw or knew so far in America. She doesn’t change her mind every few seconds, minutes, or months. She is steady. Her love and loyalty are forever. Her friendship is something you can count on. She is an amazing talent, while being so modest and down to earth. She is a young wife and mother, and an extremely attractive woman without conceit. She doesn’t need or want everyone to look at her or to give her compliments all day to feel all right about herself. She is an incredible cook, who fills every one of her dishes and pots at every meal, with love. After eating, you could feel the love growing in your belly and strengthening your body. She is a hard worker but always pleasant. She is so smart, yet so unselfish. Even when she criticizes she is accurate but soft and always sweet. The best thing about her is her certainty. Her belief in and dedication to Allah is unshakable. You could see it in her every action every day, without her preaching a word of it. Her family is her life. Umma’s love for my father is like radiation, something active and extreme that’s in each speck of the atmosphere every day. Since leaving the North Sudan, where Umma was born, raised, married, and gave birth, I do not mention her husband, my father, because mentioning missing him would set off a tidal wave of her emotions and desires and a typhoon of her tears that could only drown everyone and everything in its path. We live life like he is right here beside us in the United States.

Thanks to the work of Laird Scranton and his gracious exchange of information with his audience online, I was able -with the help of Veronique Smith- to embark upon an insight in the Dogon culture that I honestly wasn't expecting to acquire at all. In the Dogon tradition -according to Laird Scranton- a potential interface between the non-material and material worlds could be established in various ways and even probably through a non-human agent. When I projected that framework onto Islam, I reasoned that if the non-human entity were not a messenger of God and rather a being from among the Jinn, then the communication which the Dogon priests were seeking must have been satanic in nature based on the fact that the word 'satan' means in the Semitic tongue 'to diverge' - and that is exactly the effect that takes place once man seeks contact with these beings. However, I know -based on my own work- that the contrary social concept to 'divergence' is 'Umma/Ummah' and -after listening to the latest audio interview of Laird Scranton talking about Skara Brae- I heard him mention the word 'Amma' which refers to the divine in the Dogon religion and as a consequence thereof, I directly linked it with 'Umma'. This sparked my attention to realize that such a communication could have not been demonic in nature and rather didactic in purpose. But I needed a proof for it; and when I further searched for more information I found an article on Britannica -which I discovered that Laird Scranton has written it himself- mentioning the word 'Amazigb' - this word [was applied collectively to the hunter cultural groups who preceded the 1st dynasty in ancient Egypt]. The evidence was lying there in front of my eyes in that word and more specifically in the syllable 'zigb' which could have been construed from 'gizb' meaning to 'attract' or 'get together' in contrast to 'divergence'. I also discovered that there is a cultural resemblance between the Dogon and the Berber in that Berbers have the name 'Amazigh' which is derived from the name of the ancestor 'Mezeg'; this name literally means 'to mix' and 'to put together'. Laird Scranton even links 'Amma' to 'Amen', and now I don't see any other choice for me in the time being but to accept 'Amen' as a word that refers to the act of 'bringing together'.

Wananchi wataendelea kuwepo hata kama serikali haitakuwepo. Serikali haiwezi kuwashinda wananchi. Sauti ya umma ni sauti ya Mungu. Serikali haiwezi kumshinda Mungu.

Ukisema ukweli utapata uhuru wa nafsi. Ukisema uongo utapata uhuru wa umma. Heri uhuru wa nafsi kuliko wa umma.

Maana halisi ya falsafa ya 'Nitakuwa tayari kufungwa kwa ajili ya matatizo ya watu', au Falsafa ya Kufungwa, ni uvutano mkubwa uliopo kati ya Roho Mtakatifu na Roho wa Shetani kwa sisi wanadamu wote. Jambo lolote baya limtokealo mwanadamu husababishwa na Shetani na si Mungu na watu hupata matatizo kwa sababu ya kudharau miito ya mioyo yao wenyewe, au kudharau kile Roho Mtakatifu anachowambia. Unaweza kuvunja sheria kwa manufaa ya wengi kwani mibaraka haikosi maadui. Ukifungwa kwa kuvunja sheria kwa ajili ya manufaa ya wengi watu watakulaani lakini Mungu atakubariki. Kwa nguvu ya uwezo wa Roho Mtakatifu Mungu atamshinda Shetani kwa niaba yako. Tukijifunza namna ya kuwasiliana na Roho Mtakatifu hatutapata matatizo kwani Mungu anataka tuishi kwa amani katika siku zote alizotupangia, licha ya damu yetu kuwa chafu. Mtu anapokufa kwa mfano, Roho wa Shetani amemshinda Roho Mtakatifu na Roho Mtakatifu hatalipendi hilo kwa niaba ya Mungu. Ikitokea mtu akayashinda majaribu ya Shetani katika kipindi ambacho watu wote wameyashindwa; mtu huyo amebarikiwa na Mungu, ili aitumie mibaraka hiyo kuwaepusha wenzake na roho mbaya wa Shetani. Nikisema 'Kwa nguvu ya uwezo wa Roho Mtakatifu Mungu atamshinda Shetani kwa niaba yako' namaanisha, Roho Mtakatifu ana uwezo wake na Roho wa Shetani ana uwezo wake pia. Ukimshinda Roho wa Shetani uwezo wa Roho Mtakatifu umekuwa mkubwa kuliko uwezo wa Roho wa Shetani, na ukishindwa kumtii Roho Mtakatifu uwezo wa Roho wa Shetani umekuwa mkubwa kuliko uwezo wa Roho Mtakatifu, ilhali uwezo wa Mungu ni mkubwa kuliko wa Roho Mtakatifu na wa Roho wa Shetani kwa pamoja. Mungu humtumia Roho Mtakatifu kumlindia watoto wake ambao ni sisi dhidi ya Shetani … Kila akifanyacho Roho Mtakatifu hapa duniani ni kwa niaba ya Mungu, na tukimtii Roho Mtakatifu Mungu atamshinda Shetani kwa niaba yetu. Mtu anapofungwa kwa kutetea maslahi ya umma wewe unayemfunga umemtii Roho wa Shetani. Yule anayefungwa amemtii Roho Mtakatifu maana amebarikiwa, na mibaraka haikosi maadui.

The two largest and most powerful Sumer cities were Umma and Lagash,

By 2500 BCE, there were half a million Sumerians of which the vast majority lived in cities including Uruk, Kish, Nippur, Ur, Lagash, Umma, and Ur.

Many scholars consider this battle between the armies of Lagash and Umma to be the first organized battle in human history

Eventually, it was the Ensi of Umma, Lugal-Zage-Si, who became the next great leader of the Sumerian people.

The majority of the Sumerian city-temples were united by Lugalzaggisi, the sovereign of Umma, about 2375 B.C. This is the first manifestation of the imperial idea of which we have any knowledge. A generation later the attempt was repeated, with greater success, by Sargon, king of Akkad. But Sumerian civilization preserved all its structures. The change concerned only the kings of the city-temples: they acknowledged themselves to be tributaries to the Akkadian conqueror. Sargon’s empire collapsed after a century, as the result of attacks by the Gutians, barbarians who led a nomadic existence in the region of the Upper Tigris.

As expected, her chicken was crispy and flavorful. The skin yielded to expose the juicy chicken meat underneath. The sweet and spicy sauce tickled and tingled my tongue with a small amount of heat. I smiled at the camera and said, "Umma, this is amazing." My hot chicken wasn't as crunchy as Mom's, but the pieces still maintained crispiness despite being moistened by the marinade. Hot, tangy, and less sticky, my breasts and wings were tasty and had a kick to them thanks to the cayenne pepper. "Oh wow. This is super tasty too! This spicy coating doesn't work as a dipping sauce though, so you're stuck with the heat level.

The Monstera adansonnii had yellowed; the spider plant was a dismal mop; her golden pothos was crispy. He took one down and poked the dirt, hard and unforgiving. “Don’t worry about that!” she said. “Get some rest—” “It’s okay it’s okay—tell me more!” They babbled over the sound of the faucet as he watered first the pothos, then everything else in the kitchen sink. “Thank you,” she said. “Where are your towels?” Her place wasn’t big but he took his time, picking up each mug and opening all the drawers she let him. He wanted three-dimensionality after a lifetime of seeing her through photos and videos. After hours of catching up, Tim was falling asleep on Valerie’s sofa when Mother called from Seoul. He fought the jetlag to sit up so that Valerie could squeeze in beside him. “Ah!” Mother shrieked. “Valerie!” “Umma!” Valerie cried. Valerie gushed about everything the way she used to when she was a girl. Growing up, Tim had clasped the landline and then Mother’s computer and then her cellphone the two times a year they called.

Ad suddenly felt that I was owed an apology. From whom? The idiots who blamed homosexuality for every stupid thing? Or the specific idiot next to me for smothering himself in that bullshit and being unable to accept himself for what he was? Or the other idiot who fell for the first idiot, even when he knew the first idiot was an idiot, who fell for him so hard that he dug through his computer to know everything there was to possibly know about him? Maybe I was owed an apology from all of the above. Or maybe from none of them. Maybe from Umma. I really wanted a sincere apology from her. To hear her say, at least once in my life, that she was sorry. But that was never going to happen, was it?

Ḥamās perceives Islam in a defensive position, struggling against a local as well as an international environment that is openly hostile towards Muslims. The Umma has to be protected from threatening developments such as the mass immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel. The Islamic world is seen to be in a deep crisis. Nevertheless, the Islamists display self-assurance, optimism and belief in the final victory.

The main problem for the Muslims to resolve is the existence of the Jewish state of Israel in the middle of the Arab-Muslim world. It constitutes a constant reminder of the weakness and deep crisis of the Islamic Umma that does not have the strength to get rid of this 'cancer' (saraṭān). The Jewish state is presented by Ḥamās as a purely religious state which is part of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy against the Muslims in particular and the whole world in general. On these grounds, all Muslims have the duty to fight the Jewish enemy.

The West is perceived as genuinely hostile towards Islam and the Muslim countries. . . . United in their common aim to harm Islam, they are considered by the Islamists as enemies of the Umma. Any strengthening of Islam represents a victory against the West. Thus every development or event in the Arab world is interpreted as reaction to the West. Furthermore, the Islamists’ attitude towards the West and its institutions is ambiguous in a similar way as their view of the Zionists and the state of Israel, where hatred mixes with admiration.

Muhammad upheld the dichotomy of tribalism, but by prioritizing fellow Muslims over blood relatives. Thus the umma—the Islamic “Super-Tribe” that transcends racial, national, and linguistic barriers—was born*; and its natural enemy remained everyone outside it.

It still got cold during the winters then, sometimes. Umma and Apa had argued about paying for parking. By the time we had wormed our way into the crowds around the rink, our breath like clouds in the late fall air, they were angry with each other, but their bickering had ceased during that electric moment when the tree was lit up, its branches filled with thousands and thousands of multicolored stars. Afterward, we got big bowls of hot oxtail soup in Koreatown to warm ourselves up, and on the drive back home, I fell asleep in the back seat to the sound of their voices, soft and amicable again.

Forced to govern as well as preach, Muhammad in Medina was a prophet with exceptional civil power, given that the umma was a polity as well as a congregation.

The result was that the umma was spread widely across the world, but not very deeply.

Lugalanda is followed in turn by Urukagina who has become renowned not for his military exploits-in fact, he may have been man's first pacifist-but for his social and ethical reforms, the earliest in the recorded history of man. Unfortunately, his reign was brief and came to a sad end when Lugalzaggesi, an ambitious and military-minded ensi from neighboring Umma, burned, looted, and destroyed practically all the

Prayer and other forms of worship all have their own status and importance but the true sense of worship is that a person can become a 'proper human being' and that he or she adopts Akhlaaq-e-Hameeda (laudable manners). The reason for doing Dhikr and sitting in the company of the Awliyaa (friends of Allah) is solely to become better human beings, to diminish our bad habits and to learn from their excellent conduct. One of the biggest problems which we are facing is that we have forgotten those manners that should have been befitting of the Umma (followers of Muhammad).

For a second, she perked up, a Pavlovian response wired into her since childhood. The sound of the garage that meant Umma or Appa was home.

claiming the entire Guedinna as his territory and domain. The issue between Il and Entemena, however, was not decided by war. Instead, a compromise seems to have been forced upon them by a third party, probably once again the northern non-Sumerian ruler who claimed lordship over Sumer as a whole. By and large, the decision seems to have favored Lagash, since the old Mesilim-Eannatum line was retained as the fixed boundary between Umma and Lagash. On the other hand, nothing was said about compensation by the Ummaites for the revenue they had withheld; nor do they seem to have been held responsible any longer for ensuring the water supply of the Guedinna-this task was now left to the Lagashites themselves.15 Entemena was the last of the great ensi's of the Ur-Nanshe dynasty; his son Enannatum II reigned only briefly and achieved but little, to judge from the fact that only one of his inscriptions has been recovered to date-a door socket dedicated to the restoration of Ningirsu's

Indeed it seemed at first that Medina’s Jews were quite open to him. The clans of the three main Jewish tribes had willingly signed on to the arbitration agreement and were part of the umma, though only as secondary members—as confederates, that is, of the dominant Aws and Khazraj tribes. The Quranic voice had appealed directly to the original “People of the Book,” instructing Muhammad to say: “We believe in that which has been revealed to us and that which was revealed to you. Our God and your God is one.”2 The believers were not to argue with Jews “except fairly and politely,”3 the Quran instructed. They should say, “People of the Book, let us come to an agreement that we will worship none but God, that we will associate no partners with him, and that none of us shall set up mortals as deities alongside God.”4 And then, since that formulation might be understood to exclude Christians, further verses expanded on it: “Believers, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, whoever believes in God and the Day of Judgment and does what is right, all shall be rewarded by God5 . . . We believe in God and in what was revealed to us, in that which was revealed to Abraham and Ishmael, to Isaac and Jacob and the tribes, and in that which God gave to Moses and Jesus and the prophets. We discriminate against none of them.

How did the infant sent away from his family grow up to redefine the whole concept of family and tribe into something far larger: the umma, the people or the community of Islam?

She was both my first and second words: Umma, then Mom. I called to her in two languages. Even then I must have known that no one would ever love me as much as she would.

Hayatını ağır kanamalı geçirmek istemiyorsan, koparken parçalanacak kadar alışma kimseye. Onlar seni terk etmeden sen onlardan vazgeç. Kalmaya çalışıyormuş gibi yaparken bile koşarak çık bütün fotoğraflardan. O yaldızlı çerçevelerden sana bir çatı çıkmayacak, medet umma onlardan. Kendi ruhunun çatlak duvarlarına tutun, zararsız hiçliğine yapış. Bir hiçten koparken kanamaz çünkü insan.