What Shahrur Says
Shahrur defines the ummah as follows: “The ummah is a group bound by uniform conduct, and it may be rational or non-rational.”
In applying this to Qur’an 3:110, he maintains that “the uniformity of conduct that made those addressed by the verse an ummah was enjoining what is right, forbidding what is wrong, and believing in God.” He applies the same criterion to the group of shepherds in Midian, saying that the ummah there is “the group of shepherds united by a single conduct: watering.”
Atlas Explanation
Uniform conduct is the criterion by which this entry explains the designation of a group as an ummah: the mere presence of the name of a group is not enough; rather, one considers the act or conduct that brings its members together.
Conclusion
This definition allows the ummah to be read as a practical bond among the members of a group in the examples presented by Shahrur: virtuous conduct, enjoining, forbidding, and belief in God in the first example, and watering in the second.
Open Question and Limits
These pieces of evidence alone do not establish that lineage or place are categorically excluded from the concept of ummah in all of Shahrur’s uses. Likewise, the description of the ummah as possibly rational or non-rational is established in the available quotation, but its original context is unavailable in the evidence package.