[Mad Dawg]

Your feelings about what it looks like are irrelevant:

They're not "feelings". A crescent is a particular shape: a circular area with the segment of another circular area subtracted from it.

This kind of thing reminds me of the contention that an old monogram for Jesus, IHS, thus:

is proof either that Christians worship dollars or that the dollar sign shows some kinship between the Federal Reserve and Christianity.

The symbol on the top of some minarets and in the flags of some Islamic nations is a true crescent, so called because "crescent" is the stem of the present participle of the Latin verb "to grow" or "increase" and it looks like a crescent, that is, "waxing", moon.

Personally, I don't favor giving my enemies monopolies over shapes and directions. If Mecca is in the direction in which I happen to be bowing, tough for Mecca. If the Muslims think they own the moon, the hell with them.

I suggest returning the panties to their original unwadded position.

[dr_lew]

If the Muslims think they own the moon, the hell with them.

Your premise is refuted in the classic SF short story, The Man Who Sold the Earth, by Otto Binder. ( I can find mention of it on the web, but no source. ) In the story, a guy in a bar in NYC sells the earth to some stranger for a few hundred dollars ( I think ) then worries about the possible consequences.

[FredZarguna]

The architect calls it a crescent, and so does the Memorial Committee. Nobody’s panties are in a bunch but yours, with some tortured and pathetic analogy which no person who actually knows the derivation of the dollar sign would credit: it’s a U overlaying an S. Or do you think that the U and S in the dollar sign are accidental, too? It’s a crescent BY DESIGN. You’re mistaken; stop digging.

[muawiyah]

Doncha' kinda' get the feeling that hidden under all the bluster is a "hidden imam" who doesn't want us to use what he considers an exclusively Moslem symbol ~ the CRESCENT!

Just so long as the toilets in the visitors center face the right way (a$$ side toward Mecca) I think we're OK with this!