Allah not popular in Switzerland

It's true that Musims use "Allah Akhbar" as simply an exclamation, much as we would say "Oh God!"

Police in Switzerland have defended fining a Muslim man the equivalent of £178 for saying ‘Allahu Akbar’ in public. They argued that people who overheard him could have mistaken him for a terrorist.

The phrase, meaning ‘God is greatest’ in Arabic, may be infamous as a jihadist war cry, but among ordinary Muslims it has a far more mundane meaning, used in the way we might say ‘oh my God’ when we are surprised or shocked. It is uttered thousands of times a day throughout the peaceful Muslim world. Say it in Switzerland, however, and you may find yourself in trouble with the police.

The Swiss-born man, who has been identified only as Orhan E, used the phrase to express his surprise after unexpectedly seeing a friend in the town of Schaffhausen. He was then approached by a plain-clothed police officer who had overheard him. Orhan says he tried to explain to the officer that he had meant nothing by it, but she called for armed back-up anyway. He says he was manhandled by gun-toting police, before being slapped with the fine for causing a public nuisance.

The confrontation took place in May last year. Orhan only recently decided to go public after seeing reports that another Muslim man was allegedly punched by a Swiss border guard after he said ‘Allahu Akbar’. Orhan told local media that a typical Muslim will use the innocuous phrase ‘almost every second sentence’. ‘Just because terrorists misuse these two words doesn’t mean I have bad intentions when I say them’, he added.

SOURCE