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Is it Muslim or Moslem

Reader comment on item: Islamism's Unity in Tunisia
in response to reader comment: "Muslim" - another politically correct neologism surreptitiously imposed upon us by Mahometans and their apologists ( full version?))

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

Submitting....

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Reader comments (30) on this item

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