The Volokh Conspiracy
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Mohammedan Law
The Ohio Bangladesh telephonic wedding case I blogged about below mentioned "Mohammedan law," which struck me as unusual and archaic; and indeed a Google Ngrams search supports this. You can right-click on the image below and select "Open Image in New Tab" (or whatever your browser calls that) to enlarge, but basically the red line is for "Islamic law," the dark blue is for "Sharia law," and the light blue is for "Mohammedan law," which started in the lead around 1920 but is now very uncommon. ("Mahometan law" and "Mahomedan law," as you might gather, are even more unusual; "Muhammadan law" is about as rare as "Mohammedan law.")
There's nothing, of course, inherently derogatory about naming religious law after a prophet rather than after the formal name of the religion or of the religious law within the religion—portions of Jewish law, for instance, have historically been called "Mosaic law." But it's no longer customary, much as it's no longer customary to use "Hebrew" to refer to Jews as an ethnic group or a religion, though it was once quite normal, and is still reflected in the names of some synagogues and organizations, such as HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society). And when such terms become archaic enough, people who hear them might wonder, "What does he mean by that?," even in the absence of specific reason to think they are pejorative.
But while it's no longer customary in America or in American law, as best I can tell, the term appears to be quite common (spelled "Mohammedan law," "Muhammadan law," or "Mahomedan law") in the legal systems of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. This may in turn stem from history, since many treatises have been so named; and because this has been such an important subject in those countries, the term seems to have stuck. And I take it that the Ohio court borrowed Bangladesh legal usage because that's what the Bangladesh law sources (which it viewed as relevant to determining the legal rules applicable to a marriage between Bangladesh citizens, conducted by telephone when the wife was in Bangladesh) used.
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“There’s nothing, of course, inherently derogatory about naming religious law after a prophet …”
Why would anyone even think this was derogatory?
The woke crowd needs no reason to think anything.
Assumes without evidence that the woke crowd thinks.
We have a catechism based law system. It is as religiously based as the Sharia. I suggest Eugene read the Sharia. I liked 90% of it. It is much less procedural, and far more effective than our legal system. For example, the poorest Islamic nations have low crime rates. These were measured using the gold standard methods of the DOJ Household Crime Victimization Survey by the United Nations. They are not corrupt police reports.
All woke are servants of Soros and of the Chinese Commie Party, a type of Mafia. Their aim is to destroy our nation from within.
All woke is case, and the lawyer profession is colluding with our enemies to destroy this nation. It is must be stopped as the font of all evil in this country.
You’ve got that correct
Yet, it is called Mohammedan Law in both Pakistan and Bangladesh, both Islamic Republics. And if it is called such in the country where our court was importing the law from, why is using their own term inappropriate?
I thought Jeffersonians worshipped Jefferson Starship (unless they are originalists, then they worship Jefferson Airplane).
You might want to try asking a Muslim, if you can find one. They have their reasons, and since it’s their religion, not ours, simple politeness requires that we not use a name for their religion that they find offensive.
If you can’t find a Muslim, maybe you can ask a Jew why it’s inappropriate to call the religion “Mosesism” or “Abrahamism.”
From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammedan#Obsolescence):
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]
(For the footnote, you’ll have to follow the link. I didn’t paste them here because they’d be too long.)
I still think “Moslems”.
“Muslims” still reminds me of Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad.
Showing my age, of course.
So how do the adherents of the faith refer to themselves?
Presumably its something in arabic.
The Arabic word that became English Muslim is مُسْلِم which is as close in pronunciation as one could expect for such different languages. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/مسلم#Arabic
“Towel-head???”
If ‘Mohammedan’ was good enough for Churchill (one of the greatest writers and orators in the English language) it’s good enough for me. especially when the mohammedans call me the great satan or son of a monkey, or worse.
I believe “Mohammedan” was also Jefferson’s usage.
Death to Flight-ER-Doc!
I only learned in the last few years, the Persian expression “death to…” is much milder than it sounds. Compare English internet slang “die in a fire” and “nuke it from orbit”.
…and just what does “death” mean?
The literal translation is “death to America” but a more accurate translation is “down with America”. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=31116
If “death to…” is mild, what do they say when they want to be mean?
Sure. According to them, nothing is what it says…
Of course according to Taqiya, lying to dissimulate is perfectly acceptable:
https://www.abuaminaelias.com/muslims-allowed-to-lie-taqiyya/
Get in line. Try and schedule it, lots of others. Bring friends, and I suggest they bring chairs, lunches and water….
I occasionally wear a cap with “kefir” on it in English and Arabic. Can’t insult anybody, because any Muslim/Moslem/Mohammedan would agree.
I thought that was some kind of yogurt.
No?
I didn’t know about that spelling. A variant of it is South Africa’s version of the n-word.
The nice thing about an archaic term is that its meaning does not change. They always mean what the old dictionaries say.
The terms Mohammedan, Oriental, Negro, etc. were never derogatory terms. Some people hear “Chinese” and say that “Asian” is preferred, but there are good reasons for using Chinese.
Mohammedan is the more precise term when referring to a follower of Mohammad. Terms like Moslem and Islamic have broader meanings, and can be less useful.
My dad said when he was younger the word “broad” was just a female version of “dude.” Then in the 80s or something, someone declared that it was bad.
What is behind the continual push and repeated pattern of trying to redefine things as being offensive? Generally it doesn’t initiate with the group that is allegedly offended.
It was unfortunate that “Asian” replaced “Oriental”. Whoever was responsible had a poor grasp of geography.
Generalizations generally fail. Except possibly in the case of Australia, referring to people based on the continent on which they live encompasses a huge variety of groups.
“Oriental” is only a bit less over-inclusive than “Asian.”
Do you generally think of inhabitants of Turkey, India and Pakistan as Oriental?
Traditionally it referred to the Eastern Church and Ottoman territories as Distinct from the Western Church and Christian territories. All the Balkans were considered part of the Orient. Russia too.
“Oriental” meant people with an epicanthic fold, whether they were from Siberia or Hawaii. It was replaced 1:1 by “Asian”. Not a good match.
Not so, it was originally based on the jurosdiction of the Oriental Church as distinct from the Occidental Church. It included large parts of Europe.
Reader Y
Maybe that was the original meaning, but it came to mean epicanthic fold.
In Britain it was and FAIK still is common to use Asian to refer to Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans, and Orientals for Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, etc.
On spelling variation: Arabic doesn’t distinguish between the vowels ‘o’ and ‘u’, meaning you don’t find pairs of words where one has an ‘o’ and one has a ‘u’ (with the same vowel length). A lot of Arabic words entered European languages through Turkish. In Turkish the o/u sound typically became u or ü. Final ‘d’ sounds would become ‘t’ in spoken Turkish. In a direct borrowing o/u could become o and d could remain d.
There is no shortage of ways to transliterate Muhammad into English. The worst is probably the “Mehmet” seen in old references to the Ottomans. The primary cause is that Arabic is a Semitic language and does not write the short vowels. In Arabic, Muhammad is rendered M-H-M-D. This leaves motivated yet misinformed amateur arabists with more than enough rope to hang themselves.
Replace “Semitic” with “abjad”. It’s been a long day.
There are, of course, different points of view, but I believe in modern usage that “Mohammedan” is more likely to be considered offensive when used as a noun equivalent to “Muslim”, but is generally inoffensive as an adjective (much like “Oriental”).
Anyway notice the uptick in corporate media discovering the proper name for a law? I’ve never read so many references to a law in any article before – that is until the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. Florida bills with nice sounding names get called “Don’t Say Gay Law” even though that is found absolutely no where in the actual text of the bill. Funny how that works, eh?
Good lord just call people what they want.
Playing semantic games with groups you don’t like, whether Democrat Party, or Forced Birth Party, or Muhammedan, or pronouns.
We don’t mind that to a limited extent.
For example, if you don’t like S_0, we would use a nickname of your preference. However, we will not distort the structural rules of the English or Spanish language to accommodate the political whims of a small minority of the population.
Many fact-based terms and events pass from common knowledge, just as freedom is passing from our republic today. Churchill’s “votaries of Mohammed” speech will get one banned from many fora today. I encountered someone the other day who did not know that the federal government had confiscated AGFA in the United States during World War II, and no appreciation of the significance of the event. Perhaps entropy is the only law that will never be repealed, though it will some day be forgotten.
I wonder how many people nowadays would protest your (correct) plural “fora”!
Probably many would, at least by saying that you are pedantic.
A more curious case is what people would use when they want a plural of “stigma.”
The proper Greek plural would be stigmata. But that would in English has come to mean something different.
SRG: Perhaps zero? I’ve never heard of anyone “protest[ing]” the use of “fora,” as offensive or “problematic” or what have you — please enlighten me if I’ve missed something.
There is a good case to be made for using the standard English “forums” rather than than the Latinate “fora” (and it appears that American English books have shifted sharply in that direction over the past century, see ). Compare also octopuses (a good standard English pluralization), octopi (not uncommon in English, by analogy to Latin, but actually bad Latin, since octopus isn’t the sort of word in Latin that pluralizes as octopi), and octopodes (quite uncommon in English, but good Greek, which is were “octopus” comes from). But that’s hardly a matter of protest, it seems to me.
freedom is passing from our republic today.
Yeah. Right.
Churchill was ignorant of Muslims and their beliefs?
So I’ll ask again…
Mr. Bumble
August.8.2022 at 11:21 am
Flag Comment Mute User
So how do the adherents of the faith refer to themselves?
First, when the people inside the group speak a different language, they have limited rights to insist that we change our language. We, for example, still refer to Germany, Spain and Russia instead of Deutschland, España and россия (which I had to copy-paste because my standard keyboard doesn’t even have those characters). That is not demeaning, derogatory or in any way negative. They do the same when transliterating our names into their language.
Second and more importantly, why are you raising such a big deal about this when, as both the article above and many of the subsequent comments demonstrate, that is in fact what the group calls themselves – or at least, a fairly significant and directly relevant fraction of the group calls themselves.
No, not really. At least that accurately described the bill. The media is just making shit up now. This won’t do anything for actual inflation and it is just an outright lie in the name of the bill that the media is giving 100% of a pass to and they know it.
Queenie. Honey, you might not be so privileged under a Sharia based legal system. But that would be more real, less delusional than the current system. Our current system is really crazy and ineffective, except for collecting a $trillion in worthless, make work, rent seeking. Sharia based legal systems are far more effective in all law subjects, and they are all are covered.
Here, Sweetie, some reading for you and for Eugene.
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0915957728/reasonmagazinea-20/
One has to wonder if this book or others like can be accessed in Westlaw. I would appreciate a reply from anyone with an account.
Like Blacks calling each other nigger is OK but not if whitey does it?
No not at all.
I’m a CPAPist
Well papist has never been adopted by the Catholic church or in the legal codes of any country where its an Established Religion.
Mohammedism is the Established Religion in Bangladesh, and if the court is applying Bangladeshi law which specifies it as “Mohammedan law”, how else is the court supposed to reference it?
If a court is referencing foreign law, seems to me the best way to avoid confusion is to call it what its being called in that country. Think of the couple from Bangladesh, especially the losing party, reading the ruling and wondering if the judge applied the right law.
Why interesting? I used that example because of the post following this one in which a man was charged with uttering obscenities for calling Blacks niggers.
If you say so.
Let me rephrase Jimmy: “Yes, Obamacare is a good example of what we are talking about. Period. Full stop.”
There. That wasn’t so difficult. Admitting the obvious causes no harm, and doesn’t detract from (what’s, I think) your main point: That politicians–Dems and Repubs–ROUTINELY give fancy names to legislative acts. If you like the law, you’ll give it a positive nickname. If you don’t like the law, you’ll give it an unflattering name. Thus it has been. Thus is shall always be.
Obamacare: Deathcare.
Contract with America: Contract on America.
If you don’t understand the difference between branding a bill after what a politician, who happened to be President, made his signature issue as opposed to just making up a bunch of stuff that a bill actually doesn’t do so you can do some funny sleight of hand to trick with a “bill name” so readers of average or less intellect are tricked into believing your slant, then there is no hope for you.
Queenie. Our law is riddled with supernatural doctrines misapplied from the catechism. Even the Medieval church believed God would judge intent, predict and prevent accidents. At no time, did it ever believe man had those supernatural powers.
Read your state homicide statute. Then read paragraph 1857 of the catechism. Plagiarized. That is not lawful in our secular nation. No supernatural doctrines are allowed by the Establishment Clause, Sweetie.
Queenie, Baby, as I understand this. You will decide whether, after a harmful act the defendant goes home or gets the needle, based on his facial expressions, as reported by witnesses years after the event. For example, a hunter shoots another thinking him a deer or because the other’s wife paid him $10000. Sweetie, how do yo know the drunken hunter is less dangerous than the hired killer? One goes home, the other gets the cage and the needle. Explain that decision making process. Please, make your comments in Ebonics, so they can be clearer.
Great point, bruh.
Well, maybe not if you are referring to The Know Nothing party but do you have a more current usage?
Whay is it derogatory if it is how they self describe?
Bruce Hayden
August.8.2022 at 1:47 pm
Flag Comment Mute User
Yet, it is called Mohammedan Law in both Pakistan and Bangladesh, both Islamic Republics. And if it is called such in the country where our court was importing the law from, why is using their own term inappropriate?
Strictly speaking a “Mohammedan” is one who is a follower of Mohammad. The analogy there would be a “Christian” who is a follower of Jesus Christ. (see how that works?). There’s a long history behind both words, dating from the Middle Ages or before.
By contrast a “Papist” was what the English called those Roman Catholics within England, insinuating they had loyalty to the Pope and not the English Crown. There’s no justification for it, it was a new term, and it was used as a form of religious discrimination. It is more like calling a Jewish person a Kike.
You can tell the difference because people who follow the Muslim faith have used the term “Mohammedan” in the past in regards to several of their institutions, like many people who follow the teaching of Jesus Christ call many of their institutions “Christian”. However none of those who follow the Roman Catholic faith call their institutions “papist.” It’s a slur designed by those who opposed them.
“ Muslims claim that calling them Mohammedans is derogatory because it implies that they worship Mohammed (or Muhammad, as some insist we call him) and are therefore polytheists”
Citation please.
“ Sort of like papist?”
Who still refers to Catholics as Papists and if so who has raised an objection to it?
That’s kind of ignorant to just say “Muslims claim”?
Muslim is the predominant religion in regions ranging from Morocco to Southern Philippines, and Albania to sub Saharan Africa.
Depending on where you go “they” claim a lot of different stuff, just like one group of Christians with a plethora of different traditions and languages claim a lot of contradictory things that is contrary to the beliefs and usage of other Christians.
When it comes to the origin of slang terms you will almost never find a reliable origin source.
I don’t know, but if it is such an offensive word I think it should be objectionable no matter the race of the person using it.
Mad,
Well, it DID provide health care for millions of people. Including me. I was uninsurable. Slightly high cholesterol, which was easily handled with a statin that costs pennies a day. Back back also. I was locked into a terrible Blue Cross plan, which went up hundreds of dollars a year, for worse and worse coverage. Not a single other insurance company would cover me, due to my preexisting conditions.
Obamacare saved my life. (Well, it saved me from needing to declare bankruptcy, a few years later, when I needed major spinal surgery.) I don’t get subsidies, due to my income. But I now have a wide variety of plans–including some really excellent ones–and I am free to change plans every year.
I’m genuinely sorry if your experience has not been as positive. But, while there were certainly losers with Obamacare (find any legislation where there are not winners and losers, of course), there are also tons and tons of winners…people like me whose lives and livelihoods were saved by it. Make of that what you will.
…bad back also…
Glad you had a good outcome, but Obama care really didn’t solve the problems of health insurance and health care (two different things).
It was put forward as a win for all and that has not been the case.
Seems the Ohio court is also of the opinion that Mohammedan Law is an acceptable usage in Bangladesh so what’s your problem?
Your “Papist” argument is a straw man.
What do you mean, Ask Seamus, it’s his quote? You’re the one who brought up the term papist.
But when people call Catholics papists, they aren’t claiming that they worship the pope. Mary and the saints, sure. Statues of the same, you bet. But the bishop of Rome himself, c’mon man.
What do you think of 87,000 more IRS agents?
He was pretty racist against Arabs…
Yeah, maybe but language has a funny way of growing and changing without much attention being paid to how and why. Later attempts to define and explain it almost always fall short unless it can absolutely be attributed to an individual or written source.
You have friends?
What nazi cultural marxist should we all be cheering for this hour?
You know that in some cultures making comments about someone’s mother can make you dead. Especially if that mother is deceased.
You can really be a piece of shit!
Like I said, real piece of shit.
Queenie, Baby. Can you say that in proper Ebonics?
I don’t know
Yes, you do.
Yes I do what? That it may or may not be offensive when used by Blacks but is always offensive when used by any other race?
You can say that when you don’t understand those rules or their logic very well.
You are free to spit out any doggerel that you please to please 0.01% of the population to confuse the remainder.
Others find the clause “They is going to the store” an abomination or the use of an -x suffix in Spanish to be hurtfully offensive.
Could you be a little more specific? Was it racism or because Arabs were supporting Hitler?
Thank you.
Big deal.
As a Nobel prize winner once told, me “if you look hard enough, you will always find some famous person with the same flaw as you display.
Write like you are ignorant and you will be judged as such.
Yes. Root for the Nazis.
You said we fought on the wrong side in WWII. Don’t paper over it.
And as for Patton’s prediction, I wonder how many people the Nazis would have killed had they dominated Europe, with the possible exception of the UK, for those fifty years.
Fuck off.
You know what you said you did not know.
Queenie, Baby. Please, tell the class where oil will spill on the supermarket floor. Then tell us which 100 people will walk around the spill and which 1 person will fall on it. Of the first 100 who fall, tell us which one will break a hip and have damage. We are now in the 1 million odds range, Sweetie. The lawyer is delusional. He is also committing the Outcome Bias. Tort defendants have Fifth Amendment Procedural Due Process right to a fair hearing. Any Commission of a cognitive bias violates that right.
Please provide the reliability statistics of the recognition of facial expressions. Then provide their validation as indicators of intent, such as negligence vs malice. Once you hace done that, please provide ther recordings of the facial expressions of criminal defendants so we may determine their intent by their facial features. Will there be a racial component to the reading of facial expressions, Honey?
Queenie, Baby. This awful family is suing the police, saying they should have known. Watch the bodycam. Tell me if you knew that another party would choke her much later. I can tell you, this horrible family did not bring her up right. They need to pay her estate the $50 million.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/gabby-petito-family-files-50-million-wrongful-death-lawsuit-utah-polic-rcna41980
Cool comment, bruh.
Here is one from Politico and Joe Biden.
Note that it’s from last year, but the $80b price tag is the same as the Manchin Schumer bill so I think the 87000 figure is well sourced.
https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2021/05/20/irs-funding-boost-489830
Look, I’ve traveled extensively in Muslim countries from Western Africa to the far east. I’ve been to a semi-official dinner and been given a tour by the Mayor of a Moroccan municipality, and given a riad to use for my stay. I’ve had a devout Muslim girlfriend from Indonesia for a few years.
I’m just telling you saying “Muslims claim” is just as ridiculous as saying “Christians claim” because the Muslim world is as diverse and fractious as the Christian world.
Crime victim has to run for life after attack by the scumbag lawyer profession. You vile, toxic, lawyer filth must be made to pay.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/news/nyc-bodega-worker-to-flee-city-after-charges-dropped-in-deadly-confrontation/vi-AA10qFo2?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=1a5755d8fda8414198df723c1f92664f&category=foryou
Even before Hitler, Churchill wrote about the River Wars:
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”
― Winston Churchill, The River War
” “they are going.”
In which case there are more than one persons going to the store.
When you decide “they” is a singular pronoun,then you need to use a singual verb. “They goes to the store” Got it.
It just be’s that way.