Two Arabic words have become the names of a religion and its followers. Before they were names, they were ordinary words, and the Recitation uses them of people who lived long before Mohammed.
What the words are made of
Arabic builds words from roots of three letters. The root here is s-l-m, and it carries peace, wholeness, safety, and the handing over of something intact. Salām is peace. Islām is the act of handing yourself over whole. A muslim is the one doing it.
This site renders them in English rather than leaving them in Arabic. Where a translation says Islam, we read submission to The God; where it says Muslim, we read one who submits to The God. The words mean that. Nothing is being added and nothing is being softened.
Who the Recitation uses them of
The first is Abraham, and the scene is short.
When his Lord said to him, "Submit", he said "I have submitted to the Lord of the worlds."
One word from Him, one word back. Abraham then instructs his sons not to die except as those who submit (The Recitation 2:132), and the same chapter says he was neither a Jew nor a Christian but one inclining toward truth, one who submits (The Recitation 3:67).
Jacob's sons say it at his deathbed. Asked what they will worship after he is gone, they name the God of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac, one God, and say they are those who submit to Him (The Recitation 2:133).
The disciples of Jesus the Messiah say it too. When he asks who will support him for the Lord God, they answer that they have believed, and they testify that they are those who submit (The Recitation 3:52). The same is recorded again in 5:111.
And chapter 22 says outright where the name came from, and whose religion it is.
And strive for The God with the striving due to Him. He has chosen you and has not placed upon you in the religion any difficulty. The religion of your father, Abraham. The God named you "those who submit to The God" before and in this
The religion of your father, Abraham. Named before, and named again. That is the Recitation's own account of the word, and it is older than any community now using it.
The same thing, in the Gospel and the Psalms
The act the word describes is not a foreign idea to the other scriptures. It is the hardest sentence in the Gospel, said in a garden at night.
"Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done."
Matthew records the same night with the same shape: not what I desire, but what you desire (Matthew 26:39). That is submission in one line, said by the Messiah about himself. “Father” there is how he taught people to address the Lord God, who is unique and has fathered no one.
He taught his followers to ask for it as a daily thing: let your will be done, as in Heaven, so on Earth (Matthew 6:10). The Psalms say it as gladness rather than as a burden: I delight to do your will, my God, your law is within my heart (Psalm 40:8).
And the Torah asks the same of the Children of Israel: to fear Him, walk in all His ways, love Him, and serve Him with all the heart and soul (Deuteronomy 10:12).
Why this matters when people argue
The argument usually runs as though "Islam" named one group and excluded others. On the Recitation's own account it names an act, and the act has been done by Abraham, by Jacob's sons, by the disciples of the Messiah, and by the Messiah himself in a garden.
That does not dissolve the differences between communities, and we are not pretending it does. Communities differ on the law and on the method, and chapter 5 says as much: to each a law and a method was prescribed, and the racing is to be towards good (The Recitation 5:48).
But if someone asks whether they must leave one family to join another in order to submit, the verses above answer without our help. The name was given to the religion of Abraham. Whoever hands himself over whole to the Lord God is doing what the word says, and He knows what is in each heart (The Recitation 2:255).
Questions people might ask
Was Abraham a Muslim?
The Lord God revealed to us in the Recitation that he was one who submitted to The God, a muslim in the plain sense of the word (The Recitation 3:67). He lived long before the religion that carries the name.
Did the Messiah's disciples submit to The God?
The Recitation records them saying it: we believe in The God, and bear witness that we are muslims, ones who submit (The Recitation 3:52).
Why not just say "Islam" and "Muslim"?
Because a reader who does not know Arabic hears a label, and the Recitation meant an act. Rendering the words shows the act.
