Point of order!

I always thought that "M[b]o[/b]slems" were the traditional followers of Islam and M[b]o[/b]hammed while "M[b]u[/b]slims" were the newly created (20th Century) Black American followers of Elijah M[b]u[/b]hammed and the radical "Nation of Islam" sect here in America.

So when I see references here to "Moslems", I think of the current crop of Arab-style maggots infesting the world but when I see references to "Muslims", I think of our own home-grown maggots (Farrakhan, Malcom X etc.) and Black Panther types.

FWIW, I place radical "Moslems" on a slightly higher peg than "Muslims" in my scale of rotting human sewage. Both are hovering somewhat below scatophiles and necrophiles though only because the scatophiles and necrophiles tend to be less violent sorts of people compared to the radical Moslems and Muslims.

And for those who follow Islam ("the religion of peace") and who are NOT radicals or supporters/enablers of the radicals - as long as they [u]actively[/u] root out the maggots from their own religion, I view them as just as civil and humane as me. But if they remain silent about the maggots in their own religion - they themselves are maggots too.

But that's just me.

I'm pretty sure they are the same thing, with the variant spellings just being different ways of transliterating the same Arabic word.  Same with "Usama" versus "Osama" bin Laden.  When I was over in Uzbekistan, you would sometimes see it spelled Ozbekistan, and the capital city name variously Tashkent or Toshkent.  That is because it's being transliterated from one alphabet to another.  If you pronounce them correctly, they are even supposed to sound the same, but neither a "u" nor an "o" exactly reproduces the Arabic sound in English.

Neither.

If we are really lucky, the Moslems will find the Muslims to be infidels and the two factions will go to war and wipe each other out--Sunni vs. Shi'ite sort of thing...

Since BOTH Moslim and Muslim are Romanizations of words derived from a language that does not use the Greek alphabet either can be correct. These are simply phonetic renderings of foreign words that have no correct spelling in English, just accepted usage.

The same holds true for Japanese, etc. - Example: Tokio (WW2 Era usage) and Tokyo (Current usage).

This is also why you get multiple renderings of the names like Bin Laden, Khaddafi, etc.

Gets even worse when foreign dilaects come into play, as in Chinese: Peking and Beijing are a common example. Same place.

So then, is a spade a spade?