A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Qur'an, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "one who submits to God".
Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable. Muslims also believe that Islam is the complete and universal version of a primordial faith that was revealed at many times and places before, including through the prophets Abraham, Moses and Jesus. Muslims maintain that previous messages and revelations have been partially changed or corrupted over time, but consider the Qur'an to be both unaltered and the final revelation from God—Final Testament.
Most Muslims accept as a Muslim anyone who has publicly pronounced the Shahadah (declaration of faith) which states, "I testify that there is none worthy of worship except God and I testify that Muhammad is a Messenger of God." Their religious practices include daily prayers (salat), fasting during Ramadan (sawm), almsgiving (zakat), and the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj) at least once in a lifetime.
Currently, the most up-to-date reports from an American think tank and PBS have estimated 1.2 to 1.57 billion Muslims populate the world, or about 20% of an estimated 2009 world population of 6.8 billion, with 60% in Asia and 20% of Muslims living in the Middle East and North Africa.
Until at least the mid-1960s, many English-language writers used the term Mohammedans or Mahometans. Although such terms were not necessarily intended to be pejorative, Muslims argue that the terms are offensive because they allegedly imply that Muslims worship Muhammad rather than God.
Variant forms of this word are still used by many Indo-European and Turkic languages. These words are similar to the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Turkish, Bosnian, Persian, Kurdish, and Hindi words for "Muslim".
The Qur'an is clear on promulgating that every prophet preached the same faith, which centered on the worship of God. Therefore, the Qur'an speaks of anyone who submits themselves to God as being a Muslim, regardless of whether they lived before the Qur'an was revealed or after. Thus, the Qur'an narrates the preaching of Noah:
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