I grew up using the word Moslem, but over time I’ve gotten into the habit of using the word Muslim instead. From what I can tell they are synonymous, but perhaps there is a subtle difference I never picked up.
If they are two words that mean essentially the same thing, a believer in the Islamic faith, why did we change from one to the other, and is it now considered improper to use the word Moslem? Someone please fight my ignorance here…
this issue came up in my master’s thesis revisions, and the committee member who requested the change to Muslim said that it was more PC. Not a very thorough explanation, but I just made the change.
As with many transliterations from languages that don’t use our character set - there is no one correct version. They are both valid transliterations of the same word from Arabic.
I googled because I have never encountered the word “Moslem.” It appears to be an “outdated” synonym. Some sites say the way it would be pronounced by Americans, would have an offensive connotation in Arabic.
Arabic has fewer vowel sounds than English. In two cases, this can lead to confused spelling: “I” and “E” and “O” and “U”.* (Note that Osama bin Laden was occasionally spelled Usama; al Qaida and al Qaeda are variants of the same Arabic phrase.) It is the current style to use Muslim in English, but it is the same word as Moslem. (Do, however, avoid using Mohammedan or Musselman that are simply foreign words assigned to the believers of Islam and are not appropriate.)
Moslem is the older spelling. The spelling with a u is generally used now. The issue is complicated because there’s an Arabic word, “zulm”, which means cruelty or oppression, and a lot of times, people who say “Moslem” pronounce the s with the z sound…that tends to happen in English when an S is after an O. And when you do that, it sounds a lit like you’re saying “Oppressor” in Arabic. So a lot of Muslim groups have encouraged the “Muslim” spelling.
These people would probably dispute that ‘Mohammedan’ is ‘not appropriate’.
More generally, it’s pretty standard in English to refer to religious groups by the name of their founder: Lutheranism, Calvinism, Wesleyans, Buddhism, Confucianism, and the like.
While it is a common usage in English to refer to a religion by its founder’s name, it is also generally considered offensive by Muslims to refer to their religion as Mohammedanism, the occasional football club notwithstanding. Its frequent use in English in earlier years had as much to do with English speakers’ insensitivity to local traditions as anything else. (Every society tends to be insensitive to “foreigners,” but that is one that is prevalent among speakers of English.)
Based in context I’ve always taken the “mahzlm” pronunciation to be a childish derogatory swipe, like Sodom Hussein or The Dumocrat Party or Osa- I mean Obama.
I had an old coworker who would similarly misspell my name on memos and newsletters but also shirts and awards and my company ID.
That might very well be true–among those speakers of English sufficiently aware of the situation to make use of it. I doubt that one English speaker in a thousand is even aware of the possible insult. Moslem was the de facto usage for many decades.
Good point. Also remember that this is the case for Muhammad as well. “Muhammad” seems to be the preferred spelling in US English at the present time, but it can also be spelled “Mohammed” or “Mahomet”. All of those map to the same Arabic name. Iirc, “Muhammad” is currently favored here because its obvious natural pronunciation in English is closest to the original Arabic. Mapping between languages is always imperfect, so the other two are not “wrong” per se, just arguably less accurate. A similar thing happens in Christian circles with the names “Jesus” and “Jehovah”. Both of those are names that have been filtered from Hebrew->Greek->Latin->English and are arguably pretty inaccurate, but most people don’t seem to mind. A few fringe churches emphasize calling Jesus “Yeshua”, but they are much in the minority.
I’m not an Arabic speaker so the following is not first hand information.
The actual term is مسلم. This would obviously not work for English readers. So the word gets transliterated into something using the English alphabet.
The main transliteration system had been one developed by the German Oriental Society in 1936. This was adopted as an international standard. It transliterated مسلم as Moslem, محمد as Mohamed, and القر as Koran.
In the late eighties and early nineties, better transliteration systems were created, such as the American Library Association - Library of Congress system developed in 1991. This system transliterated مسلم as Muslim, محمد as Muhammad, and القر as Quran.
So Moslem, Mohamed, and Koran are not really wrong. They’re just transliterations that are considered old-fashioned and less accurate.
Thanks everyone. I no longer use Moslem commonly, but now I know why. Translating into English from another language can be problematic. Moslem was a good first try, but Muslim seems more appropriate now. I certainly don’t want to insult anyone, whether unintentionally or not.
And transliteration issues are found in other languages too. Beijing and Peking are the same city - they are just spelled using two different transliteration systems. Sometimes, a transliteration is used because people who actually speak the language prefer it - such as writing “Hmoob” instead of “Hmong”. It’s not intuitive for English speakers at all, but using the “b” like that is part of their standard transliteration system for Roman characters.
When I was a kid, in the 1960s, the prevailing usage was “Moslem” and “Mohammad.” The first time I ever heard the term “Muslim” was with relation to the Nation of Islam sect (aka “Black Muslims”), which became prominent in the news when Cassius Clay (aka Muhammad Ali) became a member.
The Romanized Popular Alphabet isn’t actually a transliteration system, it’s the writing system most Hmong use to write their language.
Some transliterations just don’t work well, so they’re constantly, um, upgraded, improved, or changed. And sometimes there are sounds in some languages that just are NOT in other languages. The “ch” sound in “Chutzpah” or “Tuchus” just doesn’t really transliterate into English.
Not disagreeing with anything you’ve said, nor the corroborations from other posters since.
But …
I think I use the typical American pronunciation. The way I say it, “Moslem” is pronounced “MOZZ-lem” where the “e” sound is really a schwa with a hint of “e” in it. And “Muslim” is pronounced “MUZZ-lim” where the “i” sound is really a schwa with a hint of “i” in it.
Bottom line, if “zulm” is offensive as you say, I don’t see that an American saying “Muslim” sounds any better to an Arabic speaker than the same American saying “Moslem”.
Color me confused.
Just for clarification: If Moslem were pronounced Mosslem, rather than Mozzlem, it would have been OK?
When asked in class the difference between Moslem and Muslim I tell the students that it is about 50 years.