The latest GOP “jihad” on free speech was triggered at a high school graduation ceremony on Thursday, when the student body president at Justice High school in Fairfax County, Virginia recited the pledge of allegiance and replaced “God” with the word “Allah” — as in one nation “under Allah.”
Newsmax panel melts down over a high school student saying “Allah” during the Pledge of Allegiance
— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) June 10, 2021
“It’s un-American, it’s unpatriotic, and it’s, quite frankly, upsetting” https://t.co/Bndb4CYZT2 pic.twitter.com/UVPA5gW3wG
Among those on the far right who took offense at the substitution was a panel of commentators on conservative media outlet Newsmax, whose members extensively decried the student’s choice of words on air.
I’ve developed an adage in the past few years: “Every time we trigger a Trump supporter, an angel gets their wings.” So I have to applaud the student for causing a panel of Trump-loving Newsmax guests to freak out by uttering a single harmless word.
In fact, this article should come with a trigger warning for right wingers, because they will read the word “Allah” many times. Even my own last name might cause conservative blood pressure to rise, given it contains the word “Allah.” (My last name translates from Arabic into English as “little servant of God.”)
Of course, the word Allah is simply the word for God in Arabic. Allah is not the name of the “Muslim” God, as the far right wants you to think, but the same God worshiped by all three Abrahamic faiths: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Indeed, the word “Allah” is used for “God” by both Christian and Muslim Arabs alike.
But facts don’t matter when it comes to the right wing’s culture war — all that matters is outrage so that people watching can forget for a moment that former president Donald Trump got crushed in the 2020 election. Hence, the Newsmax freakout.
One Newsmax panelist, Melanie Collette, said that uttering “Allah” in the Pledge of Allegiance was “an absolute disgrace.” Republican strategist Amanda Makki slammed the use of “Allah” because, as she put it, “We’re a Judeo-Christian nation.”
The message, of course, is that Muslims are not part of this nation’s founding. In reality, nearly 30 percent of the enslaved Africans brought to North America were Muslim. So Muslims were here before United States and in fact helped build it.
Makki went on to blame President Joe Biden, declaring, “President Biden has just made it so easy for people to just do whatever they want and say the things that they want.”
The word “Allah” is used for “God” by both Christian and Muslim Arabs alike.
But the winner of the conservative freak-out Olympics was GOP strategist Mark Vargas, who slammed the student as “un-American” and “unpatriotic,” ominously stating that there “needs to be consequences for this.” Vargas suggested that this “young student perhaps serve a year serving in the military, and I think that would change her perspective.”









