Is it Muslim or Moslem

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Feb 12, 2013 at 17:28

Hi Ianus

I use Muslim and not Moslem because it is the proper way to transliterate the Arabic word مسلم and this is what is called al-rasm and it is the basic layer of written Arabic that does not have any short vowels and it is only consonants so here is a quick introduction to vowels in Arabic

1. We have short vowels and they are fatha which is a or the letter a in cat, then we have the kasra which is i as in sit, and last we have damma or u as in must

2. We also have long vowels as in aa or A and uu or w and ii as in Y

Now the word Muslim when you add short vowels it will become مُسْلِمْ and this is what we have here

1. The letter meem or M is م and when you add the fatha or the a it becomes مُ so this is transliterated as Mu

2. The second letter is seen or S س and if you notice that the س has a little circle above it and it is called a sukun or no short vowel سْ and it is transliterated as S

3. The next letter is a lam or L or ل and you notice that it does have a short line below it or i لِ and this is transliterated as Li

4. The last letter is meem or M or م with a sukun or no short vowel it becomes مْ or M

et voila we have Mu S Li M or Muslim and this is indeed what is used in the Chicago Manual of Style

http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html

And indeed the gold standard in Arabic language transliteration are the guidelines by JMES and here is a link

http://web.gc.cuny.edu/ijmes/pages/transliteration.html

Now can one transliterate the word Muslim as Moslem? Yes there is nothing wrong with it as long as the reader understands that the o represents the short vowel damma and the e represents the short vowel kasra and as a matter of fact the Arabs transliterate the word muslim as moslem

I hope I helped

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".