Muslim world but are rapidly increasing. In the Eastern Middle East, Iran has a high level of youth literacy at 98%, whereas Iraq's youth literacy rate has sharply declined from 85% to 57%, during the American-led war and subsequent occupation. Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority country in the world, has a very high youth literacy rate at 99%. In Afghanistan, seminaries are operated by politically active religious organizations and have taken the place of basic education not provided and funded by the government. A 2016 Pew Research Center study about religion and education around the world found that Muslims have the lowest average
Muslim in Arabic is "muslimūn" () or "muslimīn" (), and its feminine equivalent is "muslimāt" (). The Arabic form "muslimun" is the stem IV participle of the triliteral "S-L-M". The ordinary word in English is "Muslim". It is sometimes transliterated as "Moslem", which is an older spelling. The word "Mosalman" (, alternatively "Mussalman") is a common equivalent for "Muslim" used in Central and South Asia. Until at least the mid-1960s, many English-language writers used the term "Mohammedans" or "Mahometans". Although such terms were not necessarily intended to be pejorative, Muslims argue that the terms are offensive because they allegedly imply that