I suppose I should tell people to click on the article link to see the photos, which I posted on my web site.
Pinging my friends!
D
A Grateful Bump
I saw a tv show about it tonight and it was very touching. They were very heoric and will be remembered always.
Flight 93 Memorial: A Slap at Christians in America
By A.M. Siriano
Sep 10, 2005
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The Los Angeles-based architect who submitted this disgraceful design is Paul Murdoch, who insists that no connection to Islam was intended, that his memorial is “not about religion, per se,” but is to be a spiritual, sacred place open to all. 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.)
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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.)
As one observer noted, plastering a Crescent across the landscape in tribute to the heroes of Flight 93—to be seen clearly from the air—is like building a memorial to the Holocaust victims in the form of a Swastika. Or imagine the furor had we built the Pearl Harbor Memorial in a pattern that reminded us of the Japanese war flag, with planes and ships extending, beam-like, from a central orb.
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.
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http://tinyurl.com/b5fjk