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Mohammedan is a historical term used to denote a follower of Muhammad, the Islamic prophet.John Bowker. "Muhammadans". The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. 1997. p. 389. It is used as both a noun and an adjective, meaning belonging or relating to, either Muhammad or the Islam.-Ologies & -Isms. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc.Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, edited by Noah Porter, published by G & C. Merriam Co., 1913 The word was formerly common in usage, but the terms Muslim and Islamic are more common today. Though sometimes used stylistically by some Muslims, a vast majority consider the term archaic or a misnomer, as it suggests that Muslims worship Muhammad himself instead of the God in Islam.
In Western Europe, down to the 13th century or so, some Christians had the belief that Muhammad had either been a Heresy Christian or that he was a god worshipped by Muslims.Kenneth Meyer Setton (1 July 1992). " Western Hostility to Islam and Prophecies of Turkish Doom". DIANE Publishing. . pg 4–15 – "Some Europeans believed that Moslems worshipped Mohammed as a god,..." (4) Some works of medieval European literature referred to Muslims as "paganism" or by such as the "paynim foe" (enemy). Depictions, such as those in the Song of Roland, show Muslims praying to a variety of "cult image", including Apollyon, Lucifer, Termagant, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, " Termagant and Mahound. During the trials of the Knights Templar (1300–1310s), reference was often made to their worship of the demon Baphomet; this is similar to "Mahomet", the Romanization of Muhammad's name, and Latin was, for another 500 years, the lingua franca for most of Europe.
These and other variations on the theme were all set in the "temper of the times" of the Muslim–Christian conflict, as medieval Europe was becoming aware of its great enemy in the wake of the rapid success of the Muslims through a series of conquests shortly after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, as well as the lack of real information in the West of the mysterious East.Watt, Montgomery, Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman. Oxford University Press, 1961. from pg. 229
The term remains in limited use. The Government Muhammadan Anglo Oriental College in Lahore, Pakistan, retains its original name, while the similarly named "Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College" in Aligarh, India, was renamed and succeeded by the Aligarh Muslim University in 1920, and "Mohammedan Literary Society" in Calcutta, India, was renamed and succeeded by the Muslim Institute of Calcutta in 1930. There are also a number of 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).
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