The 'Mohammedan' misnomer

‘Mohammedan’ – the word the many muslims might have come across and then might have thought to themselves “hey, whats that???” Well that’s because the more common (now) and correct way of addressing, that is, Muslim, is not being used and instead a word concocted by (former) westerners is used (by the way, ‘Muslim’ is always easier to pronounce than ‘Mohammedan’, believe me!! Try it...)
This term was never used by muslims or earlier followers of Islam, or by Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) himself. It was actually used by westerners and slowly the disease spread. Thankfully, it isn’t at epidemic levels at present. Infact, it has been suppressed quite well and the terms muslims and islam are more common today. However the spelling (and pronounciation) mistakes of related words do stay. Moslem instead of Muslim, Kuran instead of Quran, and of course, Mohamed or Mohamet instead of Muhammad.

Speaking of the term ‘Mohammedan’, it has even been considered offensive by some. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English language, Fourth edition (2000), annotates the term as ‘offensive’. The Oxford English Dictionary says – “its use is now widely seen as deprecatory or offensive”.

Late Sheikh Ahmed Deedat writes in his book, “What is His name?” -

“The white man calls himself, Christian, because he is a worshipper of Christ. He calls the worshipper of Buddha a Buddhist, and with the same logic he calls the Muslim a "Mohammedan" presuming that he is a worshipper of Muhummed. But the fact of the matter is, there is no such creature among the thousand million Muslims of the world.”

Yes, that's true. Not a single Muslim will ever worship Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). If a man builds a statue of Muhammad (pbuh) and starts worshipping it, and you destroy that statue and stop the man from worshipping, even if the whole world goes against you, the Muslims will be with you. If this indeed is the logic behind calling Muslims as Mohammedan, then certainly this logic has gone horribly wrong.

What the Qur’an has to say on this? Please help yourself -

“Who is better in speech than one who calls (men) to Allah, works righteousness, and says, ‘I am of those Who bow in Islam (Muslim)?’” [AL-Qur’an 41:33]

The Qur’an says “Say I am of those who bow in Islam”. In other words, say, “I am a Muslim”.

Say ye: “Bear witness that we (at least) are Muslims (bowing to Allah’s Will).” [Al-Qur’an 3:64]

So the above verses makes it clear, that the best way of addressing the Muslims is by calling them Muslims (with the correct pronunciation) rather than Mohammedan.

But are the ‘Mohammedans’ alone? Well certainly not! According to many, even the word ‘Hindu’ stands as a misnomer. The word ‘Hindu’ has geographical significance, used originally to refer to those people who lived beyond the river Sindhu. Historians say it was first used by Persians and Arabs.

According to the Encyclopedia of Religions and Ethics (6:690), the word ‘Hindu’ is nowhere mentioned in Indian literature or ‘Hindu’ scriptures before the advent of Muslims to India. According to the New Encyclopedia Britannica 20:581, Hinduism was a name given in English language in the Nineteenth Century by the English people to the multiplicity of the beliefs and faiths of the people of the Indus land. The ‘Hindu’ scholars say that Hinduism is a misnomer and the religion ‘Hinduism’ should be either referred to as ‘Sanatana Dharma’, which means eternal religion, or as Vedic Dharma, meaning religion of the Vedas. According to Swami Vivekananda, the followers of this religion are referred to as Vendantists.  According to him, Hinduism being a misnomer, it should be called Vedantism or Vedanta. That is why he named the first Hindu church, which he established in 1894 A.D. in North America, the Vedanta Society of New York. Jawaharlal Nehru, in his book ‘Discovery of India’, writes on pg. 74-75, that the earliest reference to the word ‘Hindu’ can be traced to a tantrik of the 8th Century C.E., where it means a people and not a follower of a particular religion. The use of the word ‘Hindu’ in connection with a particular religion is of late occurrence. Whereas today, it actually does well to represent the name of a religion.

My view is, that a religion (or anything else) should be called by the name which belongs to it (until the adherents don’t have any objections by other names). Shakespeare wrote what is in the name? Well, many might say ‘there is nothing’ ,but there certainly is a lot in a ‘wrong name’… So, Mohammedan Muslim