Air Asia Allahuakhbar: Made-Up Right Wing Nuttery

Today I was listening to Hannity's shenanigans and out of nowhere he says that they recovered and listened to the black box of the crashed AirAsia plane: the last words heard were a chilling "Allahuakhbar." When Jamie Dupree called him out and said that was probably made up, he shied away from the story, saying he's just reporting what he heard.

[I would generally use "Allahuakhbar" in two words, but am reiterating the nutter website usage on purpose.]

First problem: The whole story is completely made up. I ran into it again tonight after bumping against it on a site called Downtrend (link withheld for the sanity), a website rife with right wing conspiracy nuttery. Madness. Their link of the story goes back to Yahoo News, but the Yahoo News post has been scrubbed of the content. But it does cite a title and source of New Straits Times out of Malaysia. Only problem: there is no story about the black box contents there.

Second problem: "Allahuakhbar" is not a dedicated cry of war. It means "God is Great" and is used in many situations. If the pilots were Muslim and they were about to hit the water, "Allahuakhbar" would be something they might shout, as someone might shout "Jesus help me!" or "God be with me!"

I just wanted to get that out as it'll probably be circulating among the nuttery of the internets - and it's a big giant load of bullshit.