You, sir, are an idiot. The crescent symbol was around long before Islam and will be around long after today’s religions have been superceded by something else. Or are you truly proposing that semi-circles and crescent moons be expunged from the nation’s iconography because of your bigotry?

For your next crusade, I suggest you try to change the name of Pillsbury’s legendary side dish to “Freedom Rolls. � After all, we can’t have those evil Islamic crescents on our Thanksgiving tables!

For all of you who are joining us from Lawyers, Guns and Money, do yourself a favor and actually READ my post instead of just going off of what Scott wrote about the post. In short, think for yourself please.

Commenting is a privilege here, not a right. Ellid, you aren’t trying to have a conversation with anybody here so you’re banned.

The Ku Klux Klan marched under the Stars and Stripes thousands of times. Far more than it marched under the Confederate flag. Does that make the Stars and Stripes a Klan symbol?

Well sure, it’s certainly possible that some people did link the two at first. Thankfully, they were shamed into obscurity and the linkage was never solidified by majority opinion. However, they also use the Confederate flag quite bit nowadays and since that is essentially a flag that symbolized a failed attempt to keep slavery around, it has been linked more closely to the failed ideology of the Klan. This linkage is completely understandable.

But since we’re playing the “what if” game, let’s just suppose that the Klu Klux Klan’s message did spread and they always used the Stars and Stripes. In fact, let’s suppose that they somehow became the majority political party in this country. And let’s then say that they rounded up all the non-christians and non-whites and exterminated them. Do you think that people would a) want to change the flag and b) look at it much differently? I certainly think many would. The Nazis certainly altered the image of the swastika symbol is such a drastic way, that it could be hard to reclaim it’s religious foundations.

However, the linkage between the crescent and Islam is undeniable. Generally, I use Wikipedia to look up information and this time was no exception. Go to their site about the crescent and see what the majority of page talks about. This particular page has gone through about 50 revisions by 34 different authors. Personally, after that many opinions have dissected this idea of the “crescent”, I’d think they reached a consensus as to what it means. Of course you may deem wikipedia informtion invalid, and therefore my point.

In any event, it’s an interesting point you bring up and thanks for posing it.

For your next crusade, I suggest you try to change the name of Pillsbury’s legendary side dish to “Freedom Rolls. ” After all, we can’t have those evil Islamic crescents on our Thanksgiving tables!

Symbols don’t have meaning. They are invested with meaning by those who use them and those who receive them.

I understand your lament Cal, but I have to disagree.

Symbols do have meaning. In fact, since I wanted to be sure I was speaking correctly, I looked it up and that is the very definition of the word “symbol.” But as you point out, that meaning shifts and changes because WE define them. Unfortunately, right now the symbol of the crescent is strongly associated with Islam. That’s just the reality of the situation.

At to that point of “reality”, in this debate especially I’ve noticed that people wish that the world would work the way THEY want it to work, instead of how it actually does work. And with each example of a symbol being co-opted (like the Confederate flag or the swastika) my point becomes stronger. And given that, we need to be especially mindful of using symbols in memorials that have meanings which could offend.

In this situation, I’ll definitely err on the side of being “too PC” so we can have a new design that won’t provoke memories of Islamic extremists instead of American heroes.

Look: the homosexual community in America took the sting out of the words “gay” and “queer” not by banning them, but by embracing them. On the other hand, the Confederate battle flag, which was for decades merely an old soldiers’ symbol, used to honor the fighting men, not the political cause, got co-opted by Dixiecrats in the 1940s, then by segregationists. It didn’t belong to them. They took it. It belonged at memorial day services and in cemeteries, which for years was where you saw it.

But no one stepped up to take it back. I wish more Southern people had done that — a few try. Instead, the reaction was to ban it, kill it, bury it. And that only gave it power, negative power. It’s now not only a symbol of the worst sort of white racism, but a symbol of bad attitudes everywhere.

Symbols don’t have meaning. They are invested with meaning by those who use them and those who receive them.

But then – look at the swastika – it was a symbol of peace in Indian mythology and had been used for centuries. Then came the Nazis and now, anyone showing the swastika is assumed to be a sympathizer or a neo-nazi. You cannot use the swastika in connection with anything without that connotation, so blackened has it become.

The crescent, like Callimachus pointed out, is not a symbol of Islam per se but a symbol of the Turks which was adopted by later generations of Muslims (which is not a surprise considering the Turks were the Caliphs for centuries). It is on Islamic nations’ flags now because of that (in much the same way that many nations’ flags still have the British flag on their own).

It is a shame though, that something neutral or less threatening was not used, someone clearly did not have their thinking hat on.

An embrace
Returning to Mother Earth

Now that I have time to think it through a little more, I see a welcoming enclosure with a wide entrance through which the mourners may freely come and go, though the dead can never leave. I see a broken circle representing the impossiblilty of the dead ever completing life’s circle. I see a place where, anticipating the moment of death, the victims could sink into the arms of the (Jungian) Mother archetype.

I take it as given that others will have completely different reactions to the shape. But to see it as a hat-tip to Islam seems to me a contrived reaction, the sort of interpretation that could only be produced by a lawyer assiduously trying to find something objectionable. Paranoia can do nothing to hallow the names of those who, knowing they were doomed, risked all to save the lives of others. The road from grief to memory is not made smoother by carping.

I’ll have more on this later in another post. I appreciate the comments.

As I clipped my fingernails last night, I noticed that the parings were …. Aaaargh!!! A CRESCENT shape. The evil mullahs have invaded my body!

Come on, Justin. That Islam is the “most recognizable” use for the crescent shape is most certainly deniable. Forcing this particular crescent shape into the Islamic crescent mold is of dubious value. We are talking about a very common manifestation of a very common shape… This “crescent” is merely an unfinished circle. If you read all of the material associated with the proposal [I have some of it [here], you’ll learn that the circular walkway was built to accentuate a natural bowl-shape at the crash site and that it is “unfinished” as they have built a wall marking the extreme edge of the positioning of the crash debris. It is a circle bisected by the crash site. An circle that isn’t closed can certainly be called a crescent – or an arc or a broken circle or an open ring or any number of things. Once one understands what the circle is constrained by it is a real stretch to contort it into a secret tip of the hat to Islam.

Silliness. (Not on your part, but on the part of LGF and Captain’s Quarter commenters).

If I may, you are of a mindset that sees symbols as silly things that have little value. In other words, your sensitivities lie elsewhere. Take the great Memin Pinguin essay you wrote, for example. You come down on the side of “Would everybody just get a life already?” However, most of us are still very sensitive to symbols and, as such, we look at something like the crescent and cringe. Perhaps this is to our detriment, but that’s just how it is.

Now, does political correctness play into it? Of course. But this is more about respect for those who gave their lives so the plane wouldn’t hit the White House. I think we owe them a memorial that doesn’t use a symbol that could be associated with the terrorists.

And by the way, I’m not saying that Islam itself attacked us. But the people who attacked us were most certainly Islamic extremists. They had a decidedly religious bent, so I feel being wary of crescent shaped memorial is certainly understandable.

In any event, interesting debate. Thanks for the opportunity!

Interestingly enough, though, judging from the symbol’s presence on the city’s squad cars shown during footage of Hurricane Katrina, the crescent-and-star is also an emblem for the “Crescent City” of New Orleans…