It seems not all is calm in Pennsylvania. A petition was presented to the Flight 93 Memorial Task Force to stop construction of a memorial honoring the heroes aboard flight 93 who died in a lonely Pennsylvania field on the morning of September 11, 2001. Who would want to stop such a memorial? It appears a large group of intellectually, theologically, culturally, and socially myopic persons state they can identify the red crescent associated with Islam in the design of the Flight 93 memorial.

The issue centers around a crescent shaped line of maple trees that surround the crash site. The architecture firm responsible for the design included the name "crescent" in the name of the memorial design. So critics associate the name, the shape of the line of trees and the direction it is pointing with Islam and state the memorial somehow becomes inclusive of the hijackers. My question is, who was the authority that provided the insight into which direction the crescent had to point to face Mecca? Do the points of the crescent point east? Is the back of the crescent supposed to point east? Well let's explore this.

First allow me provide some definitions. Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon that allows a person to identify meaning or significance to something that has no meaning. Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or relevance in random or meaningless data. Do you see where I am going with this? Is it the contention of the critics that the design firm intentionally and knowingly included an Islamic crescent in the design as an insult, or is it the critics seeing their own meaning in what is simply an arrangement of trees that provide form and function to the memorial. People are swayed by the dumbest things. All someone has to say is, "Look at this architectural drawing, it has an Islamic crescent right there!" Now the connection has been made and every weak minded fool who has no clue what critical thinking is, is signing the petition.

This phenomenon is not unbelievable. How many thousands of people went to view Jesus' face on a tortilla? How many visited the Fullerton Avenue underpass in Chicago to view the Virgin Mary? So what do Jesus and the Virgin Mary look like? There are no photographs of either. There are no paintings or drawings made during their lifetimes. What people are seeing is the Holy Roman Church version of Jesus and Mary. Guess what, Jesus and Mary were not lily white Nordic looking people. They had the same look as the current residents of Mediterranean Africa and the middle east. It even happens in Islam. In Hebron, Israel, a Palestinian farmer noticed a new lamb had the word Allah spelled out in Arabic on it's wool coat. Thousands arrived to see the lamb. It's just a natural process humans use to make sense of their environment. We are always looking for patterns but sometimes it leads us down the wrong path.

Let us turn our attention to the crescent itself. The crescent and star predates Islam. Details are sketchy at best about the origin, but the symbols were used for worshipping the sun, moon and sky gods of the peoples of central and northern Asia. The symbol didn't take on a significant meaning until the city of Byzantium used the crescent and star on the city flag. Some reports indicate the symbol was used to honor the goddess Diana, a Greek god. Other reports state it was used by the Romans during a battle where they defeated the Goths on the first day of the lunar month. These uses are clearly not Islamic.

When the Turks of the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople (formally Byzantium) in 1453, they assimilated the existing city flag as their own. This is the first link of the crescent to Islam and it is linked only because the Ottoman Empire ruled the Muslim world for hundreds of years. It was the battles with Christians that suggested the crescent and star were a symbol for Islam. The Christian armies saw the flag of the Ottoman Empire during battle and falsely assumed that the flag of the ruling empire was the symbol of Islam.

So what of the crescent and star in the Islamic world today. Most Muslims reject the crescent and star due primarily to its pagan history. In reality, Islam doesn't have a readily identifiable symbol like the Cross for Christianity or the Star of David for Judaism. Only a few Muslim countries include the crescent and star as part of their flag and they are all countries of the greater Muslim world, not the middle east where Islam arose.

Where does that leave us with the resistance to the Flight 93 Memorial? It leaves us in pretty much the same position as any controversy where ignorance rules. It is a protest based on emotion with no real logical rhyme or reason. But, we all know the squeaky wheel gets the grease and the Task Force has appeased them in the past, probably because they are just as ignorant, or just do not want to deal with a bunch of whiney people. Of the five thousand plus signatures on the petition, I wonder how many of them actually donated to the Memorial?

So Speaketh the Chimp