MECCA, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

Scroll down for the latest sequel to Flight 93: Embrace of the Serp... -- I mean updates to our "Crescent of Embrace" post. Is it really a coincidence that it points to Mecca?

Then check out the latest updates and animated gif here.

From Captain Ed:

Yesterday's post on this subject generated a heated debate on the nature of the memorial, with a few defenders pointing out the generic shape of the crescent and arguing that its inclusion in the design has no ill intent, and that therefore any objections to it relegate us to lunacy. In response (and I posted this as a comment in the thread), allow me to offer a proposal for a World War II memorial in Pearl Harbor, something new and modern that can be located near the USS Arizona, and see if everyone likes it. Perhaps it could even be a mosaic or a mural on the side of the Arizona Memorial, as an addition.

I think it should symbolize the re-emergence of the US in the Pacific after the devastating attack on our fleet at Pearl. It should represent the national effort to come out of the East to reclaim our position and to establish a beacon of freedom and prosperity.

A rising sun would perfectly symbolize that.

It should also represent how we used thatas a launching point to liberate the many islands in the East Pacific that suffered under the brutal Japanese occupation. Several sunrays could symbolize our efforts across the vast ocean to bring freedom to the oppressed in faraway lands.

And since our national colors are red, white, and blue, I would design it as a red sun on a field of white, emerging over a blue ocean. Now, you may not see much of the blue because of the sea line on the memorial, but the idea would be to have the sun rise above the sea line on the Arizona memorial anyway.

Wouldn't that be a great way to memorialize those who died in a heroic battle for their country?

Oh, wait -- the "wingnuts" are claiming that the Rising Sun looks almost exactly like the battleflag of imperial Japan, the very nation that attacked Pearl Harbor! How silly of the "wingnuts"! Why, the sun belongs to everyone! And it even appears on a state flag -- Arizona's!

Had someone trotted out this idea in 1946, they'd be lucky to ever find work in the US again. It's a measure of the intellectual erosion of the Left that this kind of thinking gets celebrated and defended today.

Heh. Indeed.

MORE: The crescent as seen from the Strata-Sphere:

One final word on this for today. We need to ignore the elitists and the fantasy world that we hear them expouse. They are simply apologists who cannot understand why this is offensive and dangerous. ...

I do not care whether they get it or not. I know what Al Qaeda will do with this. They will say it is a sign that fanatical Islam will win. They will say Allah placed his sign over those of the dead Americans who fought back as symbol of victory. They will use it to rally the forces of Jihad. They will use this as a rallying point against us.

They will take a memorial that was supposed to honor our dead heroes and use it in such a manner that will mean we probably will have many more memorials to build in the future.

MORE:From A.M. Siriano

So is all this much ado about nothing, a mere coincidence?

If you believe that, then you don’t understand the nature of artists, which is what architects are. (Try to debate with them that they are not; you will get an earful.)

A couple of years ago I worked with another type of artist, a graphic designer, whose team was hired to design a website for a logistics firm. The president of the firm expressly wanted his site to convey a spirit of reliability. “When you go to this site,” he told them, “you should think reliability, integrity, a solid company that you can trust.” The team returned a week later with three or four variations for the homepage, and I noticed that one design included an Oriental-style tree. Somewhat familiar with symbols, I asked about it. How surprised I was to hear one of the designers, a young lady, sheepishly say, “Well, that’s based on an old Buddhist symbol for reliability.” (The president, an ex-Marine, stared at her as if she had grown that tree out of the end of her nose.)

Architects—good ones like Paul Murdoch and his design crew—are fully aware of the symbolism that they put into their work. The first order of business is to make money, of course, which is why their design incorporates various half-religious notions of sacredness and healing, which appeal to people’s sentimentalism. But no one can tell me that it never crossed their minds that the Crescent is the symbol of Islam, just as the Cross is the symbol of Christianity. (Neither started out that way: the Crescent was originally a pagan symbol, and the Cross was a favorite torture device of the Romans.) ...

The presence of “minaret” in the Memorial design is barely apparent, but only because, living in a non-Islamic nation, we have no need to take note of its function: it is used by the muezzin (crier) to call the faithful to turn toward Mecca and pray. The minaret, five times a day, literally becomes a “tower of voices.” Is connecting the Flight 93 Memorial tower to an Islamic minaret a stretch? Not with the Crescent symbol in proximity.

Also, few are mentioning how the key focal point of the "sacred ground" is positioned exactly where the star is supposed to be in relation to the crescent. The whole thing clearly appears to be a semi-abstract version of a "peaceful" Islamic shrine embracing the dead. I thought I was going out on a limb with my initial impression, but it's held up quite nicely.

In the context of a Flight 93 Memorial though, Islam certainly does not mean peace. The true definition of submission rises to the fore. This was the fundamental mistake of the architects who almost certainly would have gone with a new-age or buddhist influenced shrine in most other cases. You only have so many choices for representing sacredness and spirituality once you eliminate Christianity. They chose Islam. They chose to represent submission.

MORE ON MECCA: From Politicalities:

I've always been one to go for cold calculations over pretty pictures, so I set to find out if indeed the crescent points towards Mecca. Here's what I came up with:

According to this site, the latitude/longitude coordinates of Mecca are 21.4234, 39.8262 and the coordinates of the Flight 93 crash site are 40.052, -78.8963. Using the calculator from this site, I determined that the azimuth between the two points is 124.80°.

Next I went to the Flight 93 National Memorial website and found the biggest overhead view of the memorial I could find with north oriented up. I measured the distance from tip-to-tip of the crescent and came up with 64px east-west and 90px north-south. The arctangent of 64/90 is the angle between north and a line drawn between the tips, which works out to 35.42°. Adding 90° to this angle gives the direction the crescent faces as 125.42°.

Conclusion: the crescent points towards Mecca with an error of 0.62°, or 0.17%. If you take a circle and divide its circumference into 580 equal arcs, the angle subtended by one of those arcs is the error. (Bear in mind that any error in my figures could change this value; the figure most open to interpretation is the distance in pixels between the tips of the crescent.)

I'm guessing the architects probably nailed it dead on and that the tiny margin of error comes from using an image smaller than the original blueprints.

UPDATE: Belmont Club checks the math:

I went to two sites to independently calculate the bearing from the Flight 93 crash site to Mecca. You can go to the Marine Great Circle Calculator or WhereAreWe?. Both these sites accept the coordinates of points A and B and calculate the true bearing to get from A to B. Both give a result of 55 degrees true, or its reciprocal 235. I can tell you that my jaw fell open. The bearing given by both Great Circle Calculators corresponded near enough to the measured opening of the Crescent from the PDF map. (The reader should do this for himself).

Now it could have been coincidence. ... If you look at the video provided, you'll see that the orientation of the "Crescent of Embrace" is determined, or at least very strongly suggested by the contours of the ground. ...

But what a coincidence! Memorials are symbols above all and it may be inappropriate to commemorate Flight 93 with a Red Crescent facing Mecca.