أمة
Umma
The community of Muslims, united by faith across nations and cultures.
What it means
The Quran calls the Muslims a “middle” or balanced community (2:143), and says that “this community of yours is one community” (21:92). A hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari compares the believers, in their mutual love and mercy, to one body: if one part suffers, the rest respond with sleeplessness and fever.
At the same time the Quran affirms diversity: peoples and tribes were made so that they should come to know one another, and the most honoured is the most God-conscious (49:13).
Often misunderstood as
That the ummah is a political bloc seeking to dominate the world.
What the sources say
The ummah is a community of faith and ethics. Muslims live in states of every kind and have fought and allied with one another and with non-Muslims for every reason. The word is also used in the Quran for other peoples with their own prophets (10:47), which shows it is not a political claim.
Term and Arabic as listed in Ismail al Faruqi, Toward Islamic English (International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1995), p. 23, listed as UMMAH. The definition is restated here.