I’ve seen the Islamic State recruiting videos where some enthusiastic young warrior exhorts his fellow Muslim to come and fight for Allah. Come join a band of blood brothers! we are told, and become a part of the world wide Islamic family the ‘Ummah’!
All are equal in the Ummah, so we are told, there is no partiality, no racism, no preferences or prejudices. Come join in the solidarity, where Muslims support and defend one another. All are one, all are equal!
Evidently, most Muslim nations 
haven’t heard of this ‘Ummah’, or at least in the way that the enthusiastic Islamists tell us. As refugees have been fleeing Syria by the hundreds of thousands, it is as if just about all the fifty odd Islamic nations have taken a simultaneous step backwards.
None of the wealthy Gulf states want to take a single Ummah brother or sister refugee from Syria. They’re afraid that would allow terrorists in. How many refugees is Indonesia, the world’s most populous Islamic nation taking for the Ummah? Most likely none, just like the rest of them.
The only Islamic nations that are taking refugees are Jordan and Turkey, more out of sufferance because they happen to border Syria, than for any imagined Ummah. And even still, they are keen to be rid of these foreign Ummah as soon as possible.
The ‘split’ between Sunni and Shia is telling – a blood thirsty war that has been raging between the two Islamic sects since Mohammad was a boy makes the past conflicts between Catholics and Protestants look like a friendly wrestle in the backyard. Whilst the ISIS fighters talk about the Islamic Ummah, and hone their killing skills, their main victims are in fact their Muslim brothers and sisters. If Islam is dangerous, it is dangerous firstly to Muslims.
No, the Muslim brothers and sisters aren’t even traveling in the direction of Ummah nations. They clearly don’t want to go to them. They’re heading to Europe where they know they will be accepted, and embraced, as the scenes of German welcoming parties have shown. And they know that in Europe and Western nations unlike Islamic ones, not only will they be accepted and allowed to practice their religion and culture, their basic needs will be taken care of.
So where is this illusive Ummah? Evidently, it doesn’t exist in Muslim nations, that much is clear. The only place it appears exist in the imaginations of the ISIS propagandists.
One thing is clear. If you want to be a part of a worldwide civilisation, a brotherhood and family of humanity, the only place you’ll find it is Christianity and the culture of the West.
