Etymology

Etymology

Main article: S-L-M

Arabic muslimun is the stem IV participle^[7] of the triliteral S-L-M "to be whole, intact". A literal translation would be "one who wants or seeks wholeness", where "wholeness" translates islāmun. In a religious sense, Al-Islām translates to "faith, piety", and Muslim to "one who has (religious) faith or piety".
The feminine form of muslimun is muslimatun (Arabic: مسلمة‎).

Other words for Muslim

The ordinary word in English is "Muslim", pronounced /'mʊs.lɪm/ or /'mʌz.ləm/. The word is pronounced /'mʊslɪm/ in Arabic. It is sometimes transliterated "Moslem", an older, possibly Persian-based spelling, which some regard as offensive.^[8]
Until at least the mid-1960s, many English-language writers used the term Mohammedans or Mahometans.^[9] Muslims argue that the terms are offensive because they allegedly imply that Muslims worship Muhammad rather than God.
English writers of the 19th century and earlier sometimes used the words Mussulman, Musselman, or Mussulmaun.^{[citation needed]} Variant forms of this word are still used by many Indo-European languages. These words are similar to the Turkish, Bosnian, Kurdish, Persian, French, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Hindi and Portuguese words for "Muslim". In spite of that Polish word for Muslim almost certainly does come directly from the Turkish, it appears as if it did come directly from the Arabic, "Muzułmanin," the "ł" sound is close to either the American English "w" or to the "l" in Allah (most especially as pronounced by the Turkic peoples).

Islam

Most Muslims accept as a Muslim anyone who has publicly pronounced the Shahadah (declaration of faith) which states,
Ash-hadu an laa ilaha illa-lah Wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan rasulullah
"I bear witness there is no deity worthy of worship except Allah and I bear witness, Muhammad is His final messenger".
The Amman Message^[10] more specifically declared that a Muslim is one who adheres to one of the eight schools of Islamic legal thought.
Currently, there are between one and two billion Muslims, making it the second largest religion in the world.^[11]