Minnesota School Holiday Concert Includes Chants Of ‘Allahu Akbar’

Some parents at a Minnesota school are upset with a choir teacher’s decision to have students sing a Ramadan song that includes the words “Allahu akbar” during a holiday concert.

For a Thursday night holiday concert at Blaine High School, one of the songs chosen is “Eid un Sa’Eid,” an English-language song with some Arabic words that celebrates the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The lyrics, in part, go as follows:

What rankles some parents are the repeated chants of “Allahu akbar,” which means “God is the greatest” in Arabic, and is a common phrase throughout the Islamic world. In the West, though, it’s best known as a battle cry for Islamic extremists (though the phrase is hardly exclusive to them).