Ummah in Close-Up

Prof. Dr. Johan Braeckman and the Vakgroep Wijsbegeerte of the Universiteit Gent, invited me for a guest lecture on the concept of the ummah in islam.
You can download my slides/notes here. A more extensive text will follow soon.

By the way, funny thing about the muslim nation pictured above, is that there seems to be no distinction between different readings of islam. The homogeneous green suggests all is cozy in the land of islam, obscuring a political reality on the ground that is perhaps the most fractured and fractious in the world. A very different picture of the ummah is to be obtained from the following map as published in The Economist special report on religion of November 3d. Observe