What’s So Hard to Understand About Allahu Akbar?

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, never have so many been so confused for so long about two little words: Allahu Akbar.

That would, of course, be the Muslim invocation of divine blessing. Typically, it is uttered by jihadists in the midst of their murderous and often suicidal rampages.

We are usually told it translates as “God is great.” In fact, it is a supremacist battle-cry: “God is greater”!

Even more astonishing than systematic government and media failure to correctly convey the meaning of this phrase is the insistence that its recitation in the act of executing or maiming others is not instructive.

This isn’t hard. When killers using guns, trucks, suicide bombs or axes shout “Allahu Akbar,” they mean for us to die or submit.

We better get this right – and fight back effectively – if we don’t like those choices.