بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم Is it Important to Pronounce the Word ‘Muslim’ Correctly? The name Allāh has chosen for His religion is الإسلام - Islām. He, subhānahu wa ta`ālā, has also provided a corresponding name for any follower of that religion, and it is مسلم - Muslim.
"He [i.e., Allāh] named you "Muslims" before [in former scriptures] and in this [revelation] that the Messenger may be a witness over you and you may be witnesses over the people…" (Soorah Al-Hajj 22:78)
Sadly, due to the pronunciation rules within the English language the word Muslim gets pronounced as "muzlim" and Islām gets pronounced as “izlam”. These are incorrect pronunciations and not translations.
We can excuse English-speaking non-Muslims for these mispronunciations, but as Muslims we ourselves should pronounce correctly these nouns that identify us. Here are some of the reasons why:
You may say "it's not a big deal!" or (a common saying) "the Muslims have bigger issues to deal with!" In response to that, we ask you to please reflect on some of the following points:
There have been suggestions that the English pronunciation changes the meaning of the word into something offensive, is that true?
Although, this brief article deals mainly with the word 'Muslim', the same principle applies to all other (untranslated) proper nouns from the words of al-Islām. [1] One online article claimed that this word means "binding" in Arabic, however on closer inspection it appeared that the author had mis-spelled the word and made it into ملزم. May Allāh forgive us for our errors. |