1/The new religious movement brought by the Prophet Muḥammad was not always called Islam. Over the course of Muḥammad public preaching in the 23 year period, we can detect more than a few appellations and designations

2/The earliest candidate appears in the early Meccan verses. The name is tazakkī, or righteousness (تزكي). The word is used in three senses in the Quran one of which seems to amount to some sort of moral-spiritual conversion (as M Watt observed).

3/After the Hijrah, twelve or so years after the Meccan period started, the Quran in its early Medinan phase refers to the new community as "believers" or "those who believe", not to dissimilar to the Jews of Medina, where there was assimilation before active opposition.

4/Before the appearance of "Islam" as the name for the new religion, the term ḥanīf and ḥanīfīyah (الحنيفية) was employed to designate the new religion. When Muḥammad arrived in Medina, he was asked (by Abū ʿĀmir al-Rāhib, or al-Fāsiq), what is this new religion you bring?

5/to which Muḥammad replied, "I bring the ḥanīfīyah, the religion of Abraham" (as recounted by Ibn Hishām).

6/Some readers of the Quran (e.g.,) Ibn Masʿud read 3.19 as "ḥanīfīyah" instead of "Islām". In other words, 'the truthful or proper religion of God is "ḥanīfīyah"'. END.