From Manchester to Madagascar, ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is the greatest) is an expression routinely used by Muslims to underline approval, surprise, fear, grief or encouragement.
But the phrase now has an exaggerated connotation with religious violence, accompanied as it often is in TV footage by images of gun-wielding men in dusty locales. As a result, a group of Syrian activists has begun training civilian journalists operating inside the war-torn country not to say it while filming the carnage and atrocities they witness.
