Mohammedan

Last updated March 25, 2024

Mohammedan (also spelled Muhammadan, Mahommedan, Mahomedan or Mahometan) is a term for a follower of Muhammad, the Islamic prophet.^[2] It is used as both a noun and an adjective, meaning belonging or relating to, either Muhammad or the religion, doctrines, institutions and practices that he established.^[3]^[4] The word was formerly common in usage, but the terms Muslim and Islamic are more common today. Though sometimes used stylistically by some Muslims, a vast majority consider the term archaic or a misnomer.

Etymology

The Oxford English Dictionary cites 1663 as the first recorded usage of the English term; the older spelling Mahometan dates back to at least 1529. The English word is derived from Neo-Latin Mahometanus, from Medieval Latin Mahometus, Muhammad. It meant simply a follower of Mohammad.^[5]

In Western Europe, down to the 13th century or so, some Christians had the belief that Muhammad had either been a heretical Christian or that he was a god worshipped by Muslims.^[6] Some works of Medieval European literature referred to Muslims as "pagans" or by sobriquets such as the "paynim foe" (enemy). Depictions, such as those in the Song of Roland , show Muslims praying to a variety of "idols", including Apollo, Lucifer, Termagant,^[7] and Mahound. During the Trials of the Knights Templar (1300–1310s), reference was often made to their worship of the demon Baphomet; this is similar to "Mahomet", the Latin transliteration of Muhammad's name, and Latin was, for another 500 years, the language of scholarship and erudition for most of Europe.^[6]

These and other variations on the theme were all set in the "temper of the times" of the Muslim–Christian conflict, as Medieval Europe was becoming aware of its great enemy in the wake of the quickfire success of the Muslims through a series of conquests shortly after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, as well as the lack of real information in the West of the mysterious East.^[8]

Obsolescence

The term has been largely superseded by Muslim (formerly transliterated as Moslem) or Islamic. Mohammedan was commonly used in European literature until at least the mid-1960s.^[9]Muslim is more commonly used today, and the term Mohammedan is widely considered archaic or in some cases even offensive.^[10]

The term remains in limited use. The Government Muhammadan Anglo Oriental College in Lahore, Pakistan retains its original name, while the similarly named "Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College" in Aligarh, India was renamed Aligarh Muslim University in 1920. There are also a number of sporting clubs in Bangladesh and India which include the word, such as Mohammedan Sporting Club (Dhaka), Mohammedan Sporting Club (Chittagong), Mohammedan Sporting Club (Jhenaidah) and Mohammedan S.C. (Kolkata).

Muslim objections to the term

Some modern Muslims have objected to the term,^[11] saying that the term was not used by Muhammad himself or his early followers, and that the religion teaches the worship of God alone (see shirk and tawhid ) and not Muhammad or any other of God's prophets. Thus modern Muslims believe "Mohammedan" is a misnomer, "which seem[s] to them to carry the implication of worship of Mohammed, as Christian and Christianity imply the worship of Christ."^[12] Also, the term al-Muḥammadīya (the Arabic equivalent of Mohammedan) has been used in Islam to denote several sects considered heretical.^[13]^[14]

Usage by Muslims

Islam has, and has had, many schools and branches. Tariqa Muhammadiyya ("the Way of Mohammad") is a school of reform Sufism that arose in the 18th century and seeks to redirect and harmonize Sufi philosophy and practices with the authority and example of the prophet and hadith.^[15]

In Indonesia, Muhammadiyah ("followers of Muhammad") is the name of a Sunni socioreligious reform movement that shuns syncretistic and Sufi practices and advocates a return to a purer form of Islam based on the hadith and examples from the life of the prophet. It has adapted institutions such as the Boy Scouts to Islamic ends as the Gerakan Pramuka Indonesia.^[13]

Related Research Articles

Muslims are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abraham as it was revealed to Muhammad, the main Islamic prophet. Alongside the Quran, Muslims also believe in previous revelations, such as the Tawrat, the Zabur (Psalms), and the Injeel (Gospel). These earlier revelations are also associated with Judaism and Christianity, which are regarded by Muslims as earlier versions of Islam. The majority of Muslims also follow the teachings and practices attributed to Muhammad (sunnah) as recorded in traditional accounts (hadith).

In Islam, sunnah, also spelled sunna, are the traditions and practices of the Islamic prophet Muhammad that constitute a model for Muslims to follow. The sunnah is what all the Muslims of Muhammad's time evidently saw and followed and passed on to the next generations. According to classical Islamic theories, the sunnah are documented by hadith, and alongside the Quran are the divine revelation (wahy) delivered through Muhammad that make up the primary sources of Islamic law and belief/theology. Differing from Sunni classical Islamic theories are those of Shia Muslims, who hold that Imams interpret the sunnah, and Sufi who hold that Muhammad transmitted the values of sunnah "through a series of Sufi teachers".

Christianity and Islam are the two largest religions in the world, with 2.8 billion and 1.9 billion adherents, respectively. Both religions are considered as Abrahamic, and are monotheistic, originating in the Middle East.

<i>Ummah</i> Arabic term used to refer to the collective community of Muslim people

Ummah is an Arabic word meaning "community". It is distinguished from sha'b, which means a nation with common ancestry or geography. Thus, it can be said to be a supra-national community with a common history.

Kafir is an Arabic term in Islam which refers to a person who disbelieves in God, denies his authority, rejects the tenets of Islam, or simply is not Muslim and does not believe in the guidance of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

The Hijrah or Hijra was the journey the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his followers took from Mecca to Medina. The year in which the Hijrah took place is also identified as the epoch of the Lunar Hijri and Solar Hijri calendars; its date equates to 16 July 622 in the Julian calendar. The Arabic word hijra means primarily "a severing of ties of kinship or association." It has been also transliterated as Hegira in medieval Latin, a term still in occasional use in English.

In the Middle Ages, Termagant or Tervagant was the name given to a god which European Christians believed Muslims worshipped.

In Islam, a ḥanīf, meaning "renunciate", is someone who maintains the pure monotheism of the patriarch Abraham. More specifically, in Islamic thought, renunciates were the people who, during the pre-Islamic period or Jahiliyyah, were seen to have renounced idolatry and retained some or all of the tenets of the religion of Abraham, which was submission to God in its purest form. The word is found twelve times in the Quran and Islamic tradition tells of a number of individuals who were ḥanīfs. According to Muslim tradition, Muhammad himself was a ḥanīf and a descendant of Ishmael, son of Abraham.

Sir William Muir was a Scottish Orientalist, and colonial administrator, Principal of the University of Edinburgh and Lieutenant Governor of the North-West Provinces of British India.

Criticism of Islam is questioning or challenging the beliefs, practices, and doctrines of Islam. Criticism of Islam can take many forms, including academic critiques, political criticism, religious criticism, and personal opinions.

Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib is believed to be the Seal of the Prophets in all of the main branches of Islam. Muslims believe that the Quran, the central religious text of Islam, was revealed to Muhammad by God, and that Muhammad was sent to restore Islam, which they believe did not originate with Muhammad but is the true unaltered original monotheistic faith of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. The religious, social, and political tenets that Muhammad established with the Quran became the foundation of Islam and the Muslim world.

Hadith studies consists of several religious scholarly disciplines used by Muslim scholars in the study and evaluation of the Islamic hadith—i.e. the record of the words, actions, and the silent approval of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad.

Mahound and Mahoun are variant forms of the name Muhammad, often found in medieval and later European literature. The name has been used in the past by Christian writers to vilify Muhammad. It was especially connected to the demonization of a Muhammad as inspiring a false religion.

The first to criticize the Islamic prophet Muhammad were his non-Muslim Arab contemporaries, who decried him for preaching monotheism, and the Jewish tribes of Arabia, for what they claimed were unwarranted appropriation of Biblical narratives and figures and vituperation of the Jewish faith. For these reasons, medieval Jewish writers commonly referred to him by the derogatory nickname ha-Meshuggah.

Muhammad's views on Christians were shaped through his interactions with them. Muhammad had a generally semi-positive view of Christians and viewed them as fellow receivers of Abrahamic revelation. However, he also criticised them for some of their beliefs. He sent various letters to Christian world leaders inviting them to "Submission to God, Islam". According to Islamic tradition, he interacted with Christians while in Mecca.

In contrast to the views of Muhammad in Islam, the Christian views on him stayed highly negative during the Middle Ages for over a millennium. At this time, Christendom largely viewed Islam as a Christian heresy and Muhammad as a false prophet.

An infidel is a person who is accused of disbelief in the central tenets of one's own religion, such as members of another religion, or irreligious people.

Criticism of ḥadīth or hadithical criticism is the critique of ḥadīth—the genre of canonized Islamic literature made up of attributed reports of the words, actions, and the silent approval of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

An apostle, in its literal sense, is an emissary. The word is derived from Ancient Greek ἀπόστολος (apóstolos), literally "one who is sent off", itself derived from the verb ἀποστέλλειν (apostéllein), "to send off". The purpose of such sending off is usually to convey a message, and thus "messenger" is a common alternative translation; other common translations include "ambassador" and "envoy". The term in Ancient Greek also has other related meanings.

Allah as a Lunar deity refers to the postulation that "Allah" originated as a moon god. The claim first arose in 1901 in the scholarship of archeologist Hugo Winckler, who identified the name Allah with a pre-Islamic Arabian deity known as Lah or Hubal, which he called a lunar deity. The idea has been dismissed by scholars such as Patricia Crone and Joseph Lumbard, and is vehemently rejected by Muslims.

References

↑ "Error's chains: how forged and broken. A complete, graphic, and comparative history of the many strange beliefs, superstitious practices, domestic peculiarities, sacred writings, systems of philosophy, legends and traditions, customs and habits of mankind throughout the world, ancient and modern". archive.org. 1883.
↑ John Bowker. "Muhammadans". The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. 1997. p. 389.
↑ -Ologies & -Isms. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc.
↑ Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, edited by Noah Porter, published by G & C. Merriam Co., 1913
↑ A concise etymological dictionary of the English language, By Walter William Skeat
1 2 Kenneth Meyer Setton (1 July 1992). "Western Hostility to Islam and Prophecies of Turkish Doom". DIANE Publishing. ISBN 0-87169-201-5. pg 4–15 – "Some Europeans believed that Moslems worshipped Mohammed as a god,[...]" (4)
↑ Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable , "Termagant
↑ Watt, Montgomery,Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman. Oxford University Press, 1961. from pg. 229
↑ See for instance the second edition of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage by HW Fowler, revised by Ernest Gowers (Oxford, 1965)
↑ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition (2000) annotates the term as "offensive". The OED has "its use is now widely seen as depreciatory or offensive", referring to English Today no. 39 (1992): "The term Mohammedan [...] is considered offensive or pejorative to most Muslims since it makes human beings central in their religion, a position which only Allah may occupy". Other dictionaries, such as Merriam-Webster, do not label the term as offensive.
↑ see e.g. Mohammedanism a Misnomer ^{[ dead link ]}, by R. Bosworth Smith, Paul Tice; Definition of Mohammedanism, Archived 7 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine Farlex Encyclopedia; What does Islam mean?, Islamic Bulletin
↑ Gibb, Sir Hamilton (1969). Mohammedanism: an historical survey. Oxford University Press. p. 1. Modern Muslims dislike the terms Mohammedan and Mohammedanism, which seem to them to carry the implication of worship of Mohammed, as Christian and Christianity imply the worship of Christ.
1 2 JOHN BOWKER. "Muhammadans." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. 1997. Retrieved 8 June 2012
↑ Strothmann, R.. " al-Muḥammadīya." Encyclopaedia of Islam, First Edition (1913-1936). Brill Online, 2012. 8 June 2012
↑ Green, Nile, Sufism: A Global History, Jon Wiley & Sons, 2012 pg 167-168

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[1] "Error's chains: how forged and broken. A complete, graphic, and comparative history of the many strange beliefs, superstitious practices, domestic peculiarities, sacred writings, systems of philosophy, legends and traditions, customs and habits of mankind throughout the world, ancient and modern". archive.org. 1883.

[2] John Bowker. "Muhammadans". The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. 1997. p. 389.

[3] -Ologies & -Isms. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc.

[4] Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, edited by Noah Porter, published by G & C. Merriam Co., 1913

[5] A concise etymological dictionary of the English language, By Walter William Skeat

[meyer2-6] 1 2 Kenneth Meyer Setton (1 July 1992). "Western Hostility to Islam and Prophecies of Turkish Doom". DIANE Publishing. ISBN 0-87169-201-5. pg 4–15 – "Some Europeans believed that Moslems worshipped Mohammed as a god,[...]" (4)

[7] Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable , "Termagant

[Watt-8] Watt, Montgomery,Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman. Oxford University Press, 1961. from pg. 229

[9] See for instance the second edition of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage by HW Fowler, revised by Ernest Gowers (Oxford, 1965)

[10] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition (2000) annotates the term as "offensive". The OED has "its use is now widely seen as depreciatory or offensive", referring to English Today no. 39 (1992): "The term Mohammedan [...] is considered offensive or pejorative to most Muslims since it makes human beings central in their religion, a position which only Allah may occupy". Other dictionaries, such as Merriam-Webster, do not label the term as offensive.

[11] see e.g. Mohammedanism a Misnomer ^{[ dead link ]}, by R. Bosworth Smith, Paul Tice; Definition of Mohammedanism, Archived 7 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine Farlex Encyclopedia; What does Islam mean?, Islamic Bulletin

[12] Gibb, Sir Hamilton (1969). Mohammedanism: an historical survey. Oxford University Press. p. 1. Modern Muslims dislike the terms Mohammedan and Mohammedanism, which seem to them to carry the implication of worship of Mohammed, as Christian and Christianity imply the worship of Christ.

[bowker-13] 1 2 JOHN BOWKER. "Muhammadans." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. 1997. Retrieved 8 June 2012

[14] Strothmann, R.. " al-Muḥammadīya." Encyclopaedia of Islam, First Edition (1913-1936). Brill Online, 2012. 8 June 2012

[15] Green, Nile, Sufism: A Global History, Jon Wiley & Sons, 2012 pg 167-168

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