Takbir

The phrase is said during each stage of both salah (obligatory prayers, performed five times a day), and nafl (supererogatory prayers performed at will). The Muslim call to prayer (adhan) by the muezzin and to commence prayer (iqama) also contains the phrase.[6]

The phrase is sometimes used during distress.

Just before Garuda Indonesia Flight 152 crashed into the jungle near Medan, Indonesia, the pilot screamed "Aaaaaaah! Allāhu akbar" into his radio. According to a radio communication transcript, the pilot's conversation with the air controller had been in English, but his last words were the takbir as the plane crashed on September 26, 1997, killing all 234 people aboard in Indonesia's deadliest crash. It was suspected that the crash may have been due to either disorientation or turbine engine failure caused by local dense smog resulting from forest fires.[12][13]

When Reshma Begum was discovered alive 17 days after the 2013 Savar building collapse in Bangladesh which killed 1129 people, crowds jubilantly cried "Allāhu akbar" to express their joy and gratitude that she had survived.[14][15]

As a multi-purpose phrase, it is sometimes used by Arab football commentators as an expression of amazement.

The phrase is used after the birth of a child as a means of praising God.[16] It is also part Islamic funeral and burial customs.[17]

During the festival of Eid al-Adha and the days preceding it, Muslims recite the Takbīr. This is particularly the case on the Day of Arafah.[18][18]

It has been used historically as a battle cry during war.[19] Ibn Ishaq's Life of Mohammed narrates at least two incidents in which the phrase was used.

"When the apostle raided a people he waited until the morning. If he heard a call to prayer' he held back; if he did not hear it he attacked. We came to Khaybar by night, and the apostle passed the night there; and when morning came he did not hear the call to prayer,' so he rode and we rode with him, and I rode behind Abii Talba with my foot touching the apostle's foot. We met the workers of Khaybar coming out in the morning with their spades and baskets. When they saw the apostle and the army they cried, `Muhammad with his force,' and turned tail and fled. The apostle said, 'Allah akbar! Khaybar is destroyed. When we arrive in a people's square it is a bad morning for those who have been warned.'" (page 511) "So he got off his horse and came at him and 'Ali advanced with his shield. `Amr aimed a blow which cut deeply into the shield so that the sword stuck in it and struck his head. But 'Ali gave him a blow on the vein at the base of the neck and he fell to the ground. The dust rose and the apostle heard the cry, 'Allah Akbar' and knew that 'Ali had killed him." (page 456) [20]

During the Iranian Revolution of 1979, it was shouted from rooftops in Iran during the evenings as a form of protest. This practice returned in the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests,[21][22] which protested the election results.[23]

In videos released during the course of the Syrian Civil War, Free Syrian Army, Al-Nusra Front, other rebel and Islamist groups and ISIL forces are heard shouting "Takbir" and "Allāhu akbar" in the background while fighting. Even more "secular" groups such as the Free Syrian Army - Operation Southern Storm have been heard yelling the phrase before the firing of heavy weapons.[24] In 2019 during the Syrian civil war, militants shouted "Allahu akbar" before firing their mortar blasts.[25]

Almost all Muslim extremists have used the phrase while committing violent acts such as beheadings. The phrase was invoked by fighters throughout the First and Second Chechen Wars, the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines, ISIS, the Taliban and multiple groups in Algeria. Jonathan Matusitz has written:[26][27]

"Today, it is still the mujahedin's most repeated battlecry; it was shouted by the 9/11 hijackers a few seconds before hitting the Twin Towers. Shouted and heard by millions for centuries, this battle cry clearly evinces the religious nature of Islamist methods and objectives."

Matusitz argues that these beheadings are a form of ritual murder which he defines as "a sequence of repeated physical, sexual, and/or psychological assaults, along with a methodical use of symbols, ceremonies, and/or machinations".[26]

After the September 11 attacks in 2001, the FBI released a letter reportedly handwritten by the hijackers and found in three separate locations on the day of the attacks—at Dulles International Airport, at the Pennsylvania crash site, and in hijacker Mohamed Atta's suitcase. It included a checklist of final reminders for the 9/11 hijackers. An excerpt reads: "When the confrontation begins, strike like champions who do not want to go back to this world. Shout, 'Allāhu akbar,' because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers." Also, in the cockpit voice recorders found at the crash site of Flight 93, the hijackers are heard reciting the Takbīr repeatedly as the plane plummets toward the ground and the passengers attempt to retake control of the plane.[28][29][30][31]

When in March 2002 Maryam Mohammad Yousif Farhat of Hamas, popularized as "Umm Nidal" (and subsequently elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council),[32] learned that her 17-year-old son had died during a suicide attack in which he killed five students of a pre-military school, she celebrated by proclaiming "Allāhu akbar" and giving out boxes of halva and chocolates.[33][34]

In the video of Nick Berg being beheaded in Iraq in 2004, the perpetrators can be heard shouting "Allāhu akbar".[35] And in the 2007 Fort Dix attack plot, a group of radical Islamists who were convicted of plotting an attack on the Fort Dix military base in New Jersey had videotaped themselves shooting weapons and shouting "Allāhu akbar".[36][37][38] In 2008, Aafia Siddiqui is alleged to have fired at US interrogators while yelling "Allāhu akbar".[39][40][41][42]

The phrase was also invoked by Nidal Hasan. Charles Krauthammer objected to framing the Fort Hood mass shooting as being caused by PTSD rather than ideology, describing takbir as a "jihadist battle cry":[43]

"What comes as a surprise [is] that someone who shouts 'Allahu Akbar' (the 'God is great' jihadist battle cry) as he is shooting up a room of American soldiers might have Islamist motives. It certainly was a surprise to the mainstream media, which spent the weekend after the Fort Hood Massacre playing down Nidal Hasan's religious beliefs".

Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad smiled and said "Allāhu akbar" after receiving a life sentence in 2010 for his attempted bombing.[44][45]

During the incident aboard American Airlines Flight 1561 in 2011, the person attempting to bash his way into the cockpit was heard shouting "Allāhu akbar".[46] Mohammed Merah recorded himself shouting "Allahu akbar" as he killed three French paratroopers in the 2012 Midi-Pyrénées shootings.[47]

In the 2014 Jerusalem synagogue attack witnesses reported that the perpetrators screamed "Allāhu akbar" as they axed and shot at the worshippers.[48]

The killers in the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris shouted "Allāhu akbar" during their attack.[49]

During the November 2015 Paris attacks, witnesses reported hearing gunmen shouting "Allāhu akbar" before opening fire in the Bataclan theatre, killing 89 people.[50]

When Russian ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov was assassinated on 19 December 2016 at Ankara, the capital of Turkey, after shooting the ambassador the shooter shouted "Allāhu akbar" and "Do not forget Aleppo", referring to Russia helping the Syrian government conquer the eastern part of the city of Aleppo only a few days prior to the assassination.

During the Gulf War in January 1991, Saddam Hussein held a meeting with top military commanders, where it was decided to add the words Allāhu akbar (described as the Islamic battle cry)[51] to Iraq's flag to boost his secular regime's religious credentials, casting himself as the leader of an Islamic army.[52][53] Hussein described the flag as "the banner of jihad and monotheism".[54]

In 2004, the US-picked Iraqi Governing Council approved a new flag for Iraq that abandoned symbols of Hussein's regime, such as the words Allāhu akbar.[52][55] In January 2008, however, Iraq's parliament passed a law to change the flag by leaving in the phrase, but changing the calligraphy of the words Allāhu akbar, which had been a copy of Hussein's handwriting, to a Kufic script.[56][57] The Iraqi flag under Hussein had each of the two words of the phrase written in one of the spaces between the stars on the central band; the 2008 flag, while leaving the phrase in, removes the stars.

The phrase Allāhu akbar is written on the flag of Iran, as called for by Article 18 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran.[58] The phrase appears 22 times on the flag.[59]

The Afghan constitution that came into force on January 4, 2004, required that Allāhu akbar be inscribed on Afghanistan's national flag.[60]

A resistance movement that fought British rule in Waziristan, Pakistan, in the 1930s used a red flag bearing Allāhu akbar in white letters.[61]

• 
  Flag of Afghanistan, with the phrase beneath the Shahada
• 
  Flag of Iraq, with stylized Kufic script, introduced in 2008
• 
  Flag of Iran, introduced in 1980
• 
  Flag of 1930s Waziristan (Pakistan) resistance movement

• Rohi Baalbaki (1995). Al-Mawrid (7th ed.). Beirut: Dar El-Ilm Lilmalayin. ISBN 9953-9023-1-3.
• F. Steingass Ph.D., University of Munich (1870). Persian-English Dictionary, Including the Arabic words and phrases to be met with in literature. Beirut: Librairie Du Liban.