The term Muslim means

Answer 1

Islam is a religion and those who follow this religion are called Muslims.

Answer 2

Islam is the name of the religion that Muslims follow.

I'm not an expert, but I think they follow teachings of the Qur'an (in terms, the Islamic bible). Muhammad was their last prophet (messenger from God). Islam and Christianity actually have many similarities when researching further.

This is very basic, and compares to Christianity as most people have basic knowledge of this faith (some ignorant people make assumptions and stereotype Islam).

Answer 3: In terms of what the Words themselves mean.

In terms of lexicography.

Islam and Muslim are both part of the fourth verb paradigm (Af3al) of the root S-L-M where "Islam" is the Gerundial Noun (MaSdar) and Muslim is the Active Participle (Fa'3el). S-L-M has many meanings in its various verb paradigms of which the two most important are the first paradigm (Fa3ala) and the tenth paradigm (Istaf3ala), which are "Peace" and "Surrender" respectively.

The Peacemaker Definition

The relationship between the fourth and first paradigms is causative. This would mean that an action of the fourth causes the existence of the state or action of the first. A good English example would be that "dictate" is the causative of "write" because the act of dictating causes someone else to write.) Therefore, in this understanding, a "Muslim" is someone who causes peace to exist or a "Peacemaker" and "Islam" would be the act of doing this or "Peacemaking".

The Surrenderer Definition

The relationship between the fourth and tenth paradigm is the removal of reflexivity. This is a little more difficult of a theory to apply in this case since "surrender" is usually seen as a non-reflexive action already, but the theory goes thus. The tenth paradigm would be the reflexive of the fourth paradigm, for which an example would be that the verb in the fourth might be to wash a dog and the verb in the tenth might be to wash oneself. In this case, a Muslim is someone who is capitulating or surrendering to a higher state of being, i.e. a Surrenderer to God.Islam is therefore this act of Surrender.