Al-Umma: Reform, Resistance, and the Periodical’s Role in Pan-Islamic Thought

Abstract This paper explores alternative political imaginaries, envisioned communities, and forms of resistance as articulated in the Arabic newspaper al-Umma: ǧarīda ʿarabīyya taṣduru kull yawm ǧumʿa (Al-Umma: An Arabic Newspaper published every Friday), published and edited by Sheykh Abū al-Yaqẓān (d. 1973), a former student of the Ibadite reformist scholar Muḥammad Aṭṭfiyaš (d. 1914), in Algiers in 1933. It examines how the periodical fashioned itself as an embodiment of the umma (nation) and how its readership formed a community around it. This analysis draws on Jutta Ernst and Oliver Scheiding’s perspective on periodicals, which posits that they function as assemblages that transcend their physical form, becoming expressions of social networks and communities. Focusing on the periodical’s characteristics and features, its language, editorials, symbols, and calls to action, the paper demonstrates how al-Umma was transformed into a subject associated with the umma for its readers. Using Birgit Meyer’s concept of aesthetic formations as a framework, this paper investigates how the newspaper helped construct and embody a pan-Maghrebian identity in 1930s Algeria, beyond the notion of a fixed, bounded social entity.