The Mounting Significance of Allahu Akbar as a Warning Cry
Conditioned by years of religion of peace public relations and propaganda, many still believe the scream of Allahu akbar — heard with increasing frequency these days — is as simple as announcing God is Great. But indifference towards the phrase is misplaced. Every time this cry is sounded, it’s a warning. Hear it.
Last weekend, demonstrators yelling Allahu akbar tried to breach the gate outside the White House. In Crown Heights in late October, a knife-wielding Muslim screamed Heil Hitler, I will kill you, Jew and yes, Allahu akbar at a nine-year-old Jewish boy. On New Year’s Eve in Times Square, a convert to Islam from Maine attacked three policemen with a machete while also screaming Allahu akbar.
This cry is particularly popular these days in modern France, where a teenage defendant recently screamed in juvenile court, Allahu akbar, you’re all going to die together.
Another made a series of false bomb threats against a hospital, declaring: It’s going to blow, Allahu akbar! A third announced to his stunned non-Muslim roommate: You are not a Muslim, this Friday I am going to pray against you. Allahu akbar, we must eliminate the kuffar [disbelievers] like you.
Allahu akbar, however, is international. At the end of October, a mob repeated it as it moved through Makhachkala airport in Dagestan, hunting for Jews who had landed there on a flight from Tel Aviv. If they had been able to catch up to the passengers, they would no doubt have slaughtered them.
While most media outlets routinely translate Allahu akbar as God is great, it actually means Allah is greater. That is, the god of Islam is superior to anything that non-Muslims worship or hold dear. This declaration of superiority frequently accompanies acts that are designed to enforce the subjugation and submission of the non-believer or infidel, amounting to a kind of explanation of why a particular act of violence is being perpetrated.
As such, it’s actually an essential part of jihad. Thus, the chief 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta reminded himself to shout it out as he began his jihad mission: When the confrontation begins, strike like champions who do not want to go back to this world. Shout, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers. Striking fear, or terror, into non-Muslims is an Islamic imperative.
Yet despite the mountain of evidence that Allahu akbar is anything but a benign phrase, New York City even recently began allowing the Islamic call to prayer, which repeats this phrase several times. This was the culmination of a years-long process to normalize it, and stigmatize those who sounded the alarm.
In the New York Daily News, Zainab Chaudry of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) argued that non-Muslims shouldn’t believe the worst about Allahu akbar because Muslims don’t just scream it while murdering non-Muslims, but use it in a variety of contexts. She even offered this chilling advice, certain to get people killed were it ever heeded: So the next time you hear Allahu Akbar — whether it’s in a media report, on an airplane, or in a shopping mall, remember that the phrase used by millions of Muslims and Christians daily to praise God regardless of their circumstances, can never be justified for use when harming His creation. In other words, stay put and risk it. Because fleeing for your life would be Islamophobic.
On CNN, the popular imam Omar Suleiman also argued that Muslims say Allahu akbar in a variety of contexts, many of them positive. And the New York Times actually tweeted that the phrase Allahu akbar had somehow become intertwined with terrorism.
But for the serious, the watchful, and the wise, Allahu akbar is a phrase that should not be normalized nor sanitized in the West. It is a statement of Islamic supremacy at best, and one of war and aggression too often. It’s worse than yelling fire in a theater. It is often used as incitement to cause harm. Hear it.
