"Allahu Akbar", an innocuous phrase, has become sinister with time.

A joke in Pakistan - if you hear "Allahu Akbar" from anyone other than the Imam leading the prayers, duck and lie down. A bomb is coming your way, LOL.

In Mohammedan days it meant "God is the greatest", a central meme of Islamic Belief and Prayer.  Mohammed was for meditation and peace. Of 88 or so skirmishes with the infidel 80 were defensive within 10 miles from Medina where he lived, a few punitive, none aggressive.

Just after he died the Muslim neocons had a counter revolution and set up a Kaliphate for gore, glory, conquest, and colonialism.  The second Kaliph morphed the Islamic Call to Prayer by deleting the phrase "Come to the Best of Deeds" lest the subjects shun Jihad which had now become the sole aim.

Allahu Akbar then became a battle cry, has remained since for majority 85% of Muslims (Sunnis).

The Shia, the remaining 15%, never blurt out this phrase, saying it quietly in their prayers.