ISLAM THE BASICS

MEANING OF ISLAM AND MUSLIM
 
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The Quran
 
   This day [the day of the Prophet's 'Farewell Address' on
   which the last verse of the Quran was revealed] have I
   made perfect for you your religion, and have completed
   My favour towards you, and am satisfied with Islam for
   you as your religion. -- V:3
 
   Do not dispute with the people of the Book [Jews,
   Christians, Sabeans], unless it be in a way that is
   better, save with such of them as do wrong; and say: We
   believe in that which has been revealed unto us, and
   revealed unto you; our God and your God is One, and unto
   Him we surrender. -- XXIX:46
 
Muhammad Asad, The Message of the Quran
 
  . . . the Quran cannot be correctly understood if we read it
  merely in the light of later ideological developments, losing
  sight of its original purport and the meaning which it had - and
  was intended to have - for the people who first heard it from the
  lips of the Prophet himself. For instance when his contemporaries
  heard the words islam and muslim, they understood them as denoting
  man's "self-surrender to God" and "one who surrenders himself to
  God," without limiting himself to any specific community or
  denomination - e.g., in 3:67, where Abraham is spoken of as having
  "surrendered himself unto God" (kana musliman), or in 3:52 where
  the disciples of Jesus say, "Bear thou witness that we have
  surrendered ourselves unto God (bianna musliman)." In Arabic, this
  original meaning has remained unimpaired, and no Arab scholar has
  ever become oblivious of the wide connotation of these terms. Not
  so, however, the non-Arab of our day, believer and non-believer
  alike: to him, islam and muslim usually bear a restricted,
  historically circumscribed significance, and apply exclusively to
  the followers of the Prophet Muhammad. -- Foreword, p. vi
 
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Science & Civilization
 
  In its universal sense, Islam may be said to have three levels of
  meaning. All beings in the universe, to begin with, are Muslim,
  i.e. "surrendered to the Divine Will." . . . Secondly, all men who
  accept with their will the sacred law of the revelation are Muslim
  in that they surrender their will to that law. . .
 
  Finally, we have the level of pure knowledge and understanding. It
  is that of the contemplative, the gnostic . . . The gnostic is
  Muslim in that his whole being is surrendered to God; he has no
  separate individual existence of his own. -- p.23