How about The Daily Show? I’ve noticed recently that Aasif Mandvi, whenever he has occasion to say “Muslim,” ALWAYS pronounces it “Muss-lim.” As it’s his religion, I figure he knows what he’s talking about.
Aasif doesn’t seem to be appearing on the Daily Show these days as often as he used to, but he does occasionally turn up.
Color me now convinced. Ignorance fought.
I’m going to bet that Islam / Islamist / Islamic is best pronounced with an S and not a Z also?
Jinnah, for one, used ‘Mohammedan’ as well as ‘Muslim’.
Jinnah died 66 years ago. There is a reason I specifically said 21rst century and not 20th ;). Jinnah received an Anglo-centric education in the 19th century ( he became a lawyer in the 1890’s ) and it is exactly in much older British academic works that I’ve seen the term used most often. But it was almost certainly waning by the time Jinnah passed and it definitely has become archaic now. I doubt your’re going to see it used seriously in any modern English-language academic work in this day and age ( excluding folks with an anti-Muslim agenda ).
oops. nm.
I’ve also heard recently that some Muslims consider “Mahomet” to be inherently pejorative.
This because the name Muhammad in Arabic means “the praised one”, but “ma” is a negation in Arabic, making the “mahomet” pronunciation closer to “Mahomind”, which would mean “he who isn’t praised”.
Huh, I don’t know where that leaves this, but perhaps it is context.
I agree, but if your heroes on Fox News pronounce it mahzlm your probably going to follow suit. I have witnessed this with my father in law.
(Generic “your” - I don’t mean you specifically)
The implications of this point in particular are interesting, when we consider again the work of Luxemberg, who through his Arabic/Syro-Aramaic analysis reinterprets the inscription on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem from “There is no god but God alone . . . Mohammed the servant of God and messenger” to “There is no god but God alone . . . Praised be the servant of God and his messenger.” In other words, that this is in fact a message about Christ in the context of debates in Syriac Christianity. As we consider the possible evolution of a Syriac Christian sect into Islam, the initial role of Muhammad becomes more interesting.
I am willing to bet, though, that most people using a word like Mohammedan in the 21st Century Anglosphere are not making some conclusion derived from the works of Wansbrough, Crone, and Luxemberg.
Yes this is true.
and of course one is free to call the black Americans Negros and Nigras and pretend that because in the prior centuries this was okay, that there is no change in meaning or sense in this century.
and other people will be free to understand other motivations and conclude things not positive about the character of the person.
No, this would not be something a native Arabic speaker would conclude. To hear Mohamet is simply to hear a Turkish pronounciation.
If someone makes this claim they are not mastering arabic and/or they are likely of the sort of person who seeks out offense.
If you insist on keeping this line, it is necessary to note that the work is not considered very credible in the extreme of its assertions and it is very tied to a Christianist argument. It is not GQ to pretend this argument is a widely supported view outside of certain circles with religious / ideological views.
I believe that the disclaimer I gave when I first mentioned Luxemberg is enough to demonstrate the reception of his scholarship, reinforced by my followup qualification of the “possible” evolution of early Islam (cite talks about possible milieus, if not genetic parentages, for the creation of the Qur’an). As it is, I place Luxemberg’s work in the “ambitious, needs further study” category, and in the realm of respectable scholarship. It remains to be seen where he will go with this; Crone (who has criticized Luxemberg’s work) has mostly stepped away from her early and provocative book Hagarism, but what has grown more mainstream since she wrote that is a strong skepticism of traditional Islamic historical narratives.
The problem with talking about ‘credible’ in regards to early Islamic history is that the direct evidence is so slim; we haven’t had a Qumran Scrolls moment happening yet. With the way the Saudis are bulldozing Mecca, we might never have it. This is why both my posts referred to the issue of originality that often guides discussions of Islam, the Qur’an, and as we see, issues like pronunciation.
Luxemberg is a fine example of how modern scholarship is questioning what we think we know, even if his specific arguments are on the more radical end. He isn’t alone in this pursuit; Lüling and Azzi are similarly on the radical end and even more mainstream scholars such as de Blois, Van Reeth, and Neuwirth have done compelling work questioning facets of traditional narratives of early Islam, a scholarly trend in the West popularly started by Wansbrough in the 1970s.
Me I like Mussulman or paynim or follower of Mahound. OK, I’m kidding, these were all epithets used historically for Muslims when the two major religions were constantly at each other’s throats. Now hopefully only a small minority of Christians and Muslims want to commit each other to eternal perdition, although such minorities can be a threat out of all proportion to their numbers.
Personally, as a life-long atheist, I think the sooner people stop believing in imaginary super-beings the better for all of us.
without any comment on these observations, and I think you present these things more strongly than merited, none of this tells you very much about the modern arabic or these words and their pronunciations. It is importing other considerations.
So presumably we have a university committee (the very essence of PC) presumably familiar with the topic if they are examining a thesis which uses the term, and only one member felt it was inappropriate? That does not give me confidence in the veracity of the “story” about the spellings.
If I search for example, the Telegraph, CBC, Washington Post, I can find occasional uses of the term “Moslem” rather than “Muslim”. In some other media, the word is mainly used in letters and comments.
In York University, the written response by a university professor to a student’s request to be excluded from working with women-
My guess is that the “offensive” claim is a bogus story made up by people looking to find an excuse to be claim offense, the reason why is an extreme stretch based on weird pronunciations, either term is simply the same transliteration using different rules and accents for the pronunciation - and in the long run, us ignorant inarticulate westerners pronounce both spellings pretty much the same.
If you want to listen to Arabic voices, try Holy Quran :: شبكة المسلم
it seems to me the sensitivity in the anglophone sphere is coming from the south asian anglophone muslims whose native languages use the Persian pronunciations of the quranic terms. The pronunciations in this case are not extreme stretches but are not proper arabic either.
I do not see it as offensive, but it is a small thing to use muslim contra moslem in english.
Being myself not an Arabic speaker ; and my med.hist. teacher who brought up the idea in class, who is one, having also rejected the theory while tactfully bringing this sort of notion up ; I’ll happily concede that and defer to both of your expertises.
But right or wrong, offenderatis or not, I wouldn’t insist on using the word if someone told me it bothered them (even though it is the “proper” French spelling, dixit the Académie). It’s not like I have money riding on one transliteration over the other, you know ? 
Since you sound like you are both reasonable *and *know what you’re talking about …
My challenge with this sentence
is that for American me, moslem and muslim are pronounced almost identically. So changing the spelling doesn’t accomplish anything for me. How are these two words to be reasonably pronounced by an English speaker so one is different from, and “better” than, the other?
I do not know, it would seem strange to me you pronounce them the same but I do not know the Engish dialect you have.
The word moslem seems old fashioned in english usage to me, from my reading and experience only finding older anglophones using it, but I am not offended by it and do not really care. The version “muslim” is more current it seems.
I would think you pronounce it naturally ‘mus-lim’ which would be identical to the arabic pronunciation. I suppose this is considered more polite.
I noted already the idea of the moz-lem pronunciation sounding like the word oppressor in arabic requires the person to be using a persian type pronunciation and not proper Arabic. This is very common in the South Asia - the Afghanistan, the Pakistan, the India etc. muslim populations, so I think if there is a reaction it is coming from them. For formal arabic or my dialect it sounds nothing like this and it would never occur to me.
As a side note, the name “musselman” (I’m not in the mood to look it up on this fine Saturday morning) was given by other prisoners in Auschwitz to those who had become shuffling shells dull-eyed waiting for death.
Now there’s a cultural backstory I haven’t the faintest clue.
St John of Damascus, one of the earliest Christian polemicists against Islam (and his stuff is great, BTW) referred to them as “Ishmaelites”.