Ummah Market expected to open in January
Ummah Market, “a full-service ethnic international supermarket,” is expected to open in mid or late January in a former Walgreens in the Culmore area of Bailey’s Crossroads.
The store, at 6053 Leesburg Pike, will specialize in halal products and promises to bring fresh produce and hot prepared food to the neighborhood, along with items from the Middle East, Afghanistan, and India, among other places.
The Culmore store will be Ummah Market’s second location. The first store was founded in 2020 in Richmond by brothers Jawad, Shahwali, and Naser, immigrants from Afghanistan.
A statement on Ummah Market’s website says the brothers “are committed to creating a space where everyone feels welcome and has access to hard-to-find products that will remind people of old times or memories from back home.” Ummah means “community” in Arabic.
We are so blessed to have such a wealth of different foods right in our neighborhood, either as ingredients or already prepared. Plus these cuisines featured at Ummah can be quite healthy as well as tasty.
Ummah means “community” in Arabic. That’s the first line in the Wikipedia article. It goes to explain that it really refers to Islam.
But actually, according to the Oxford Dictionary defines it more specifically as: “The whole community of Muslims bound together by ties of religion”. Brown University’s department of Linguistics puts it this way: “In reference to Islam, ummah refers to the whole Muslim world, or the community of believers. As a theological concept, the ummah is meant to transcend national, racial, and class divisions to unite all Muslims.” According to Encyclopedia Britanica, the term was invented to mean the uniting of Arab tribes into a community (ummah) recognizing Muhammad as the “Messenger of God.”
All sources agree on this meaning.
The stores website says the company was “established in 2020 to bring 100% high-quality Halal products” to Richmond.
So don’t expect to find “international” products like Korean or Chinese, nor would I expect to find Kosher items. I imagine there will be good produce, in addition to Halal meats, along with home products (soap and stuff, I guess) that is acceptable to practitioners of Islam. But it’s not in some general sense “international”. It’s intended to give Muslims a religiously legal place to shop for high-quality food.
The muslim community is in fact a very international one. Muslims and their traditions live all over the world, with high concentrations in several countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Eurasia. Many halal grocers carry Lebanese, Palestinian, Turkish, Egyptian, Moroccan, Persian, Indian, Pakistani, Indonesian and Malaysian products and more.
I have been to many Muslim owned supermarkets. I’ve seen them carry a diverse array of products including kosher in some cases and products that are made in non-Muslim majority countries (India, China, for example). Please don’t make assumptions and let the people who own the place tell people what they actually carry.
Any specialty items one would recommend to buy here who don’t normally shop at these types of groceries? I like to shop at different cultures groceries and get new things, but not sure what I would get here off the bat.
Over/under on how many days after we read the article about the grand opening that we’ll be reading the article that it got robbed?
I was thinking the same thing.
Debbie Downer. Bet of luck in new venture.
I wish the business owner who took the risk to open a business the greatest of success. It’s good for everybody if it is successful. It’s a comment on the surrounding area, not the owner trying to improve a vacant building and area.
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Looks nice. I’m glad the building is no longer empty. This area doesn’t need any more empty, dilapidated buildings!
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I drove by this today and wondered what it was! Now I am excited and will definitely visit 🙂
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