Students in public school were assigned to write in Arabic the Shahada (Testimony of Faith), not in Tennessee, but in neighboring Virginia.
In English, it is:
I bear witness that there is no God except Allah;
And I bear witness that Muhammad (peace be upon him) is His servant and messenge...
One important note. It is a categorical error to translate the Shahada as "... no God but Allah." It should either be "no God but God" or "no Allah but Allah." Wikipedia uses the former as their translation.
@VladimirF or "Ilaha Illa Allah", basically, "La Ilaha Illa Allah" is: "none shall be worshiped except Allah" or "none shall be worshiped except the Creator" syaria.com/34-the-meaning-la-ilaha-illa-allah.html
@Ryan, ilaah would be god without capitals. Allah would either be untranslated (as it's a name) or translated as God with capital G. So either god/Allah or god/God (Wiki does the latter). God with capital G would often be translated back as Al-Ilaah "The (one) god"
@VladimirF I don't think "no God except of Allah" is the best translation. Especially capitalizing the "G" is wrong. "None should be worshipped but the one God" sounds more accurate to me. But I can't put original research in a SkepticsSE answer. I would need a reference that translates the whole Shahada differently that I can quote, to change that part of my answer.
@Ryan, "no Allah but Allah" and "no God but God" are tautologies. On the other hand "no god but God" or "no god but Allah" or "none to worship except God" mean something.
@Ryan Ex-Muslim here. What I know from my past 20 years of being a Muslim, it translates to "no God but Allah". Of course, you can be politically correct and choose to indulge into classic "interpretation" game. But I can make reasonable claim that if you ask any devout Muslim, they will say the same thing.
@VladimirF The English version that the Tennessee students wrote was "Shahada Creed: Allah is the only god; Mohammad is his prophet" according to the photograph here springhillhomepage.com/maury-parents-angered-over-islam-unit which is probably what's most relevant to this question, especially since the question itself says "Allah is the only God".
@DavePhD Wikipedia translates it as "There is no god but God. Muhammad is the messenger of God." 'Allah is the only God' is certainly a wrong translation.
I understand that they are not the same word. If you want to be pedantic, the correct translation is "There is no God but [the] God." The point is that Allah is not a personal name like Jehovah, and it is deceptive to treat it as such.
Discussion on answer by DavePhD: Were…
Discussion on answer by DavePhD: Were…