Mohammed.Amin.comFresh thinking from a British Muslim
Summary
1 December 2010
The Arabic language is written in a script completely different from the Roman letters used for English. Accordingly, when Arabic text is presented to English speaking readers, most of the Arabic text will be translated into English, while some words, such as personal names, are “transliterated” as opposed to being translated.
One such word which is always transliterated rather than translated is the name of Islam’s holy book, namely the Quran.
Transliteration systems for foreign languages such as Chinese and Arabic have changed many times over the last few centuries. For example, with Chinese around 1982 most reputable English language publishers such as major newspapers went over to a system called Pinyin. That change accounts for China’s capital being called Beijing in today’s newspapers whereas in 1970’s newspapers it was called Peking.
Similarly, the preferred systems for transliterating Arabic have changed over time. In the 19’th century, it was standard practice to transliterate the Islamic holy book as “Koran” whereas now the standard accepted transliteration is “Qur'an.”
Likewise, the followers of the Islamic religion used to be transliterated as “Moslems” whereas the standard transliteration is now “Muslims.”
The correct pronunciation of the Arabic word transliterated as Qur’an uses the glottal stop which is represented by the apostrophe
Similarly many other words related to Islam or Islamic finance when correctly transliterated use a glottal stop. However, on my website except when I am quoting verbatim from another source, I never use the apostrophe in such a manner.
Realistically, whether the apostrophe is present or not, I and other native English speakers (unless formally trained in Arabic pronunciation) cannot pronounce words like "Qur'an" the way that an Arabic speaker would. The reason I exclude the apostrophe is that for a native English speaker, its presence immediately makes the word look foreign.
English is a language that has absorbed words from other language with enormous vigour. This has given it by far the largest vocabulary of any language. In due course, I expect words like Quran, Shariah; and also various terms used in Islamic finance such as musharaka, mudaraba, takaful and ijara for example, to become normal English words, just like algebra (an import from Arabic longer ago). However, this will not happen if the word contains an apostrophe, as that will always mark it as a foreign word.
Hence I always leave out the apostrophe when the original Arabic contains a glottal stop.
One would expect that it shouldn’t matter, apart from showing that the writer was a bit out of date. However, over the last few years I have noticed something.
If someone uses the words “Moslem” and “Koran” instead of “Muslim” and “Quran,” statistically it is quite likely that the writer is hostile to Islam.
I suspect that in most cases this derives from simple ignorance; the writer is genuinely unaware that Muslim is the preferred usage instead of Moslem. However, if the writer is unaware of that simple point, realistically they are not likely to know much about Islam, and hostility towards Islam is frequently based upon limited knowledge of it.
In a few cases people will be using the word “Moslem” instead of “Muslim” deliberately to irritate Muslims because they are aware that Muslims dislike that obsolete usage. I would like to explain the point with the benefit of an extreme analogy. In the 19’th century it was normal usage amongst white English speakers to refer to people from sub-Saharan Africa as “niggers” without necessarily intending that term to be insulting. Now any usage of the word “nigger” in the UK or the USA is rightly taken as an extremely serious use of abusive language.
While deliberately using “Moslem” instead of “Muslim” is not as insulting as the above example, when “Moslem” is used knowingly in place of “Muslim,” in my view that is done to give offence.
Many large organisations have official style guides. I have consulted some to confirm that they concur that "Muslim" is the correct usage. Each heading below links through to the relevant style guide.
Paragraph 21.8 - Islam. Islam is the faith, Muslim (not Muhammedan, Mohammedan) a member of that faith.
Scrolling down to the letter "M" you find "Muslim" but do not find "Moslem."
You need to scroll down to page 69 and 70 for the list of religious terms to find the text which I have copied and abridged below:
religious terms:
Islam; Islamic
Muslim: Shiite; Sikh; Sunni
In passing, it is obviously a mistake in the style guide to list “Sikh” as a subset of “Muslim.”
I have corresponded with the Foreperson/Style Board Chairman, Proof and Copy Markup Section, United States Government Printing Office via their website suggesting that they correct this. He confirmed on 7 December 2010 that the existing presentation is incorrect, and that in future it will be corrected to put Sikh on its own line as a separate religion.
If you scroll down, you will find:
Muslim
not Moslem
In the section on troublesome words, on page you will find the following definition of Fatwa.
Fatwa is often misused. It is a formal legal opinion handed down by a Muslim religious leader or court. It may or may not be a death sentence.
The word "Moslem" does not appear in the style guide.
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