The word
muslim or
moslem is the
active participle of the same verb of which
islām is a
verbal noun, based on the
triliteral Š-L-M "to be whole, intact". A female adherent is a
muslima (; also
transliterated as
muslimah). The plural form in Arabic is
muslimūn () or
muslimīn (), and its feminine equivalent is
muslimāt ().
In English The ordinary word in English is "Muslim". For most of the 20th century, the preferred spelling in English was "
Moslem", but this has now fallen into disuse. That spelling and its pronunciation were opposed by many Muslims in English-speaking countries because the "s" was often pronounced with a z sound. This made the word more closely match the Arabic triliteral
ẓ-l-m (), which has negative meanings and includes the Arabic word for "the oppressor". In the United States, the
Associated Press (AP) instructed news outlets to switch to the spelling "Muslim" in 1991, making it the most common spelling thereafter. The last major newspaper in the
United Kingdom to use the spelling "Moslem" was the
Daily Mail, which switched to "Muslim" in 2004. Although such terms were not necessarily intended to be
pejorative, Muslims argue that the terms are offensive because they allegedly imply that Muslims worship
Muhammad rather than
God. Other obsolete terms include
Muslimite and
Muslimist. In medieval Europe, Muslims were commonly called
Saracens.
In Islam The Muslim philologist
Ibn al-Anbari said: In several places in the
Quran, the word
muslim conveys a universal meaning, beyond the description of the followers of
Muhammad, for example:
Quranic studies scholar
Mohsen Goudarzi has argued that in the Quran the word
dīn means "
worship", the
islām means "
monotheism" and the
muslim means "monotheist". Until the 8th century, the term
muslim was more inclusive, including anyone who was considered to be submitting to God—e.g. Christians and Jews—and the term ''mu'min'' was instead used to refer to believers in Islam as a distinct religion. ==Qualifiers==