Twenty-two years after the 9/11 jihad attacks, it has come to this: on Thursday, as anti-Israel protesters stormed the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan, screams of “Allahu akbar” could be heard among the crowd. After two decades, the war cry of those who took down the Twin Towers has returned to the scene of the crime.
Newsweek reported Friday that “a video of a pro-Palestine protester shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ outside New York City’s World Trade Center has led to fury online.” That video does indeed feature a lone voice screaming “Allahu akbar,” as well as “Takbir,” which is a call to which people are supposed to respond with “Allahu akbar.” The only response this fellow apparently gets, however, is one person telling him to “shut the f**k up.” Another video, however, appears to show more than one person joining the cry.
🚨🚨HAPPENING NOW🚨🚨
Anti-Israel protestors target the World Trade Center in NYC—the site of the deadliest terror attack on US soil.
This is shameful. pic.twitter.com/qXWrYn5nnM
— Joe Roberts (@Joe_Roberts01) December 29, 2023
The sight of people screaming “Allahu akbar” at the World Trade Center site is jarring, as the phrase is inextricably bound up with 9/11. The most prominent 9/11 hijacker, Mohamed Atta, reminded himself before the attack to “shout, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers.”
Newsweek, however, is eager to downplay all this. It tells its unfortunate readers that “Allahu akbar” is “an Arabic phrase meaning ‘God is great’ or ‘God is greatest.’” It says that the phrase
“has significant meaning for Muslims and is often used as a call to prayer.” Imam Omar Suleiman, founder and president of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, is brought in to pronounce fancifully that the phrase “Allahu akbar” is “a celebration of life, the first words fathers whisper in the ears of their newborns. They are used to indicate gratitude when God bestows something upon you that you would have been incapable of attaining were it not for divine benevolence.”
Gee, that’s swell, but gratitude and benevolence are not usually the contexts in which the phrase is heard in the U.S. In early November, demonstrators yelling “Allahu akbar” tried to breach the gate outside the White House. In Crown Heights, New York City, 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. Last New Year’s Eve in Times Square, a convert to Islam from Maine attacked three policemen with a machete while also screaming “Allahu akbar.”
What’s more, both of the translations of the phrase that Newsweek offered are wrong. “Allahu akbar” 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.
Yet despite the mountain of evidence that “Allahu akbar” is anything but a benign phrase, New York City, the same city where the towers came down, 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.
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That effort has been going on for years. Back in 2017, 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. CNN featured Suleiman’s benign explanation of the phrase. And the New York Times actually tweeted that the phrase “Allahu akbar” had “somehow” become “intertwined with terrorism.” Somehow!
The incident at the World Trade Center on Thursday was a fresh reminder of the fact that all that, however comforting, was balderdash. Besides “Allahu akbar,” the demonstrators were chanting “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” which is a thinly veiled call for the destruction of Israel and a new genocide of the Jews.
The phrase “Allahu akbar” should not be normalized or sanitized in the West. It is a statement of Islamic supremacy at best and one of war and aggression all too often. Those who treat it as a simple expression of Islamic piety are, unfortunately, in for a rude awakening from those who, like Atta, think of it as a means to terrify and terrorize the infidels.
