Ummah Wide Call for Submissions

Published in

The Center for Global Muslim Life

7 min readOct 19, 2014

Know One Another لِتَعَارَفُوا

Ummah Wide is a platform built to tell stories across borders and boundaries. It is built to tell the stories that are not being told, stories that may not fit in neatly defined boxes, but merge and live across the realities of faith and identity, politics and history, cultures and everyday life around the world as it is lived on the ground.
Ummah Wide is a platform designed to connect people and to aid us in developing an Ummah Wide consciousness across race, faith, gender, nations, tribes and across differences and distances. We are a transmedia storytelling company built for emerging ideas, fiction, investigative journalism, politics, art, literature, travel guides, literary non-fiction and brands that transcend the global borders and boundaries of the Muslim and Human family.

In short — YOUR STORIES are at the core of everything we are building

Submissions: We are looking for all things beautiful with the art of storytelling at the center. From photo essays, to visionary ideas, emerging social good brands, reading and watch guides, graphic design, lists, literature, art, travel guides, short films, oral history, memoir pieces, book, website and film/ YouTube/ television reviews, travel literature, timely news pieces, stories about gender, race, class and identity, environmental reflections, and whatever else you want to pitch, we are ready to listen.
We believe that everyone has powerful stories to tell, do you have an idea that you want to pitch but you can’t quite figure out how exactly to put it together? Give us an idea of what you are thinking and our dexterous editors will gladly send you feedback to help you get your stories off the ground.
Are you already writing on Medium.com? We would love to see what you’ve published — you can always submit a story to Ummah Wide just send us a message if you think it is something we should see.
Are you new to Medium—see our user guide to help launch your ideas and visualize your stories

Send your pitches and finished stories to: dustin@ummahwide.com

Ummah Wide Article Series

We have a number of ongoing article series that we are launching and we need writers, editors, and artists, social innovators and companies to feature in these articles. Have an idea for any of these article series or want us to feature you or your company? Please contact us at—ummahwide1@gmail.com

Remembering Malcolm — 50 Years Gone: We want to publish a number of pieces in honor of Malcolm X that focus on how his legacy lives with us today as we approach the 50th anniversary of his martyrdom on February 21, 2015. Do you have a story about how Malcolm changed your life? A poem? A review of one of the many books about Malcolm and his legacy?

Startup Ummah — Social Entrepreneurship Series: the Startup Ummah Social Innovation Series, is a new set of conversations with some of the worlds leading Muslim social innovators who are working across many different sectors. Ranging from social entrepreneurs to community organizers, the Ummah for Good series is about those trying to build a better world for all of humanity. Are you interested in having yourself or your company featured in the Ummah for Good series?

2030 Visions: In 2030 1 out of every 4 humans on this earth will be Muslim, these 2 Billion plus people will make up the single most diverse religious group on this planet with Muslim religious and cultural leadership emanating from every part of this global Muslim community. From California to Mecca, Paris and Kuala Lumpur, from Accra to Sydney, we need visions and visionaries. Tell us your 2030 vision and the type of world you want to build over the next 15 years.

Many Tribes Travel — 72 Hour City Travel Guides: Our travel guides take you to cities throughout the world, and give you a 72 hour itinerary with a combination of the local Muslim community, history, and sights blended all together. Interested in helping us build a travel guide for your city? Hit us up.

Artistic Inspirations — Designers, artists, film makers, photographers, writers and poets: As artists we all have our inspirations that drive our work, in this series we are looking to feature artists of all different mediums to answer the following question — what are 10 things in your life that inspire your art? They can be other pieces of art, scripture, family, film, whatever. What makes you do the art that you have been called to do? This should be around 10 to 15 inspirations, with your own work interspersed throughout.

Reading and Watch Guides: Our reading and watch guides are epic guides and overviews to different topics and issues. Think you know a subject well and want to give the world some quick, beautiful links to understand something more? Check out our recent Hajj read and watch guide for an example of what we are talking about.

Oral History Series: We love oral histories like the After Malcolm Project, Voice of Witness and StoryCorp — do you have an interesting oral history idea that you could see on Ummah Wide?

Ummah Classics: Ummah classics are excerpts from classic pieces of literature, films, art, anything you think is something classic that needs to be brought back for public consumption today. Think something is classic and want to remix it for us on Ummah Wide?

Ummah Wide Investigates: We want to support serious, in depth, long form journalism that tells the stories throughout the Ummah that are most often ignored. We also want to financially support journalists who are ready to tell these stories. Let us know what ideas you have and what you want to work on and lets grow together.

Why Medium You Ask?

Good question, we are on Medium because it gives us a platform that allows us to publish beautiful content right now as we build out our own platforms, website and apps that will give us as many functions and as much ease as Medium, to be launched in 2015 (God willing).

Want to work with us to build Ummah Wide?

Technical Partners— interested in building a truly global platform from the ground up with us? We have big ideas and we need the right technical partners to help us get them off the ground. From apps, to publishing we are ready to build with you.

Funding— Do you believe in telling a different story about Muslims throughout the world focused on the thousands of daily stories that are ignored by the main stream press? So are we, we believe we must shift the narratives about Muslims within the Muslim community and in the world at large. We would love to talk to you more about what we are building and how we could partner to create something truly transformative.

Global Bureau Leads — Want to take a lead with Ummah Wide in your country or region, are you well connected to writers, thinkers, social entrepreneurs and have a drive and passion for storytelling across borders? We would love to hear from you.

Designers — Beauty and design are at the core of Ummah Wide and we cannot take the next steps with this publication without our global design community, are you interested in working with Ummah Wide to design articles, cover photos, or anything else you can imagine?

Editorial Interns— Want to explore a career in publishing and digital media and looking for a fast paced environment to start? We are looking for committed and passionate editorial interns who can help us with day to day editing, to work with writers on design and publishing on medium and many other things.

Writers— We need staff writers, we have a ton of story ideas and we will not grow Ummah Wide without more writers who can help us grow.

Social Media Interns— We have a number of social media campaign ideas that we want to build out. Are you interested in social media marketing and interested in working with our channels on: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Pinterest? We are looking for short form story tellers who can help launch Ummah Wide to new global audiences.

Photographers — Interested in featuring your work on Ummah Wide? We love photo essays and all visual storytelling, have a unique idea and story you want to tell with your photos?

Translators— Medium recently launched a translation program where you can easily translate already existing articles on Medium. To build an Ummah Wide platform we know we must publish in more then just English — we are looking for translators in — Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Turkish, Spanish, and French.

We would also love to see original pieces in any of the above languages that we can then translate into English.