- Life Style “Muslim” and “Moslem” are nothing more than “two
different spellings of the same word,” according to the US-based
Center for Nonproliferation Studies. This statement was made
neither by Arabs nor linguists, but by a pair of US military
specialists. Nonetheless, it has multiplied itself across
hundreds of internet articles. The two different spellings, the
CNS specialists wrote, “have no political significance.”
Ostensibly, it’s true: Both words point toward the same
community of believers. And while there’s an argument to be made
that “Muslim” helps evoke a more accurate pronunciation, both
“Muslim” and “Moslem” can be spoken in widely variant ways —
from Moozlem to Mahslim — depending on the speaker’s English-
language dialect and accent. But this hardly makes them “the
same word.” Words are the sum total of their associations, and
the older term, Moslem, has been burdened with dozens upon
dozens of ugly connotations. Changing the transliteration to
“Muslim” was not necessarily more accurate. But