Muslim or Moslem? How to spell and pronounce?

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The title says it all. I'm confused, and I want to learn what's appropriate and accurate.

moslem seems to be an older spelling common in the last century and before, but i can't recall hearing it spoken now (and knowing they meant to say "moslem"), so no word as to how it's pronounced. for the most part i encountered it in older books.

my first instinct is to guess the first vowel "O" is not a schwa as in "muslim", but a more pure [o] sound as in "low", the rest of the word being pronounced the same.

there are many ways to transliterate arabic, and this change may simply be a reflection of the ways those methods have evolved. some dialects of arabic do not differentiate between [o] and [u], unlike modern hebrew that does.

being a semitic language, vowels are not emphasized in writing.

Probably also varies with various dialects of arabic.

Older texts in english refer to them as musulmans or musselmen, which I think is much funnier.

^ they are called "musulman" in spanish and many other romance languages.

"Moslem" (MAW-zlem) was the norm in speech (and in print) in my neck of the woods in the 1970's.

I only knew one person in 70's who said "Muslim", but that one person was a guy I knew in college from Pakistan (of Muslim background). So that one person had a little more authority than mom and dad and everyone else I knew then(not that I worried much about it then).

But nowadays (hadnt really thought about it until just now) I guess that I do tend to say "Muslim". Thats become more common now.

You do see "Mohammedan" in old books. And sometimes even "Musulman" in old books, but that later would never work in actual speech in English because it would sound like you were talking about a bodybuilder (muscleman).

Its like Khaddaffi (or Qaddaffi, or a zillion other spellings). Not only are there dialect differences in Arabic, but Arabic is written in a different script from the Roman alphabet that English written in. So even the same variant of an Arabic word can be transliterated differently into English.

Either "Moslem", or "Muslim" is okay.

Bodybuilders, or possibly clam fishers.

Both are correct. Moslem is just an older variation of what is now more commonly spelled and used and referred to as Muslim. Much of the French-speaking world is also Muslim and in French it is Musulman (I think this might also be a transliteration or close to the transliteration in Arabic but I do not know enough Arabic or Farsi to know for certain on this one). Moslem is often heard to sound like Moz'lem or Mawz'lim if you hear it from older people.

Moslem with 's' is the more right Arabic pronunciation of the word.
But 'Muslim' is the correct english word.

It's like how Christian arabs call themselves 'Masihiyeen', which refering to Al-Massih, the arabic word of messiah.

When referring to the religion, it's Islam.

A person who follows the Islamic religion is a muslim/moslem.

Moslem, as other posters stated, was common in the 20th century.