Tancredo condemns continued use of giant crescent in Flight 93 Memorial

Posted on November 5, 2007


Tancredo condemns continued use of giant crescent in Flight 93 Memorial

In September 2005, Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo said that he would not be happy so long as the Flight 93 Memorial still included the giant crescent. He has kept his promise. The crescent is still there, and Tom Tancredo is NOT HAPPY.

Alec Rawls has just received from Representative Tancredo a letter of complaint that Mr. Tancredo sent to Park Service Director Mary Bomar this afternoon. It notes the continued presence of the crescent:

Unfortunately, it appears that little if any substantive changes to the most troubling aspect of the design – the crescent shape – have been made.

And it calls for scrapping the crescent design entire and starting anew:

And while I regret having to contact the Park Service again about this issue, I sincerely hope that you will direct the committee to scrap the crescent design entirely in favor of a new design that will not make the memorial a flashpoint for this kind of controversy and criticism.

Thank you Tom Tancredo! The full text of Mr. Tancredo’s letter is pasted below.

G Gordon Liddy is on it

Alec Rawls will be on G Gordon Liddy’s radio show tomorrow morning (Tuesday) from 11-12 EST, talking about the many Islamic and terrorist memorializing features in the planned memorial. The show should be a blockbuster.

Tom Burnett Sr. is going to call in. Tancredo or his press secretary Mac Zimmerman may call in. And YOU can call in:

1 800 GGLiddy

Streaming audio and broadcast stations here. Podcasts here. For the full expose, see Alec’s Crescent of Betrayal book, available for free download until the print edition of the book comes out in February.

A crescent and star flag on the crash site

For those who are not familiar with the memorial debacle, the original Crescent of Embrace design would have planted a bare naked Islamic crescent and star flag on the crash site:

Bare naked crescent and star flag on the crash site

Architect Paul Murdoch’s job is to work with symbols. He did not plant an Islamic flag on the crash site by accident. But even if this were somehow coincidence, it would still be wrong to build the memorial in a shape that the hijackers claimed as their own.

Representative Tancredo was the only Congressman to state the obvious, that “the crescent’s prominent use as a symbol in Islam–and the fact that the hijackers were radical Islamists,” raises the possibility that “the design, if constructed, will in fact make the memorial a tribute to the hijackers.” (Tancredo Press release, 9/12/2005. See Crescent of Betrayal, download 1, page xiii.)

Two days later, Tancredo’s press secretary laid out Tom’s conditions:

… that the congressman would be happy with the changes only if the crescent shape is removed.

Nothing was changed

All the Memorial Project did was add some surrounding trees. Every particle of the original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact in the Bowl of Embrace redesign. The crescent shape was NOT removed. It was only very slightly disguised:

Crescent/Bowl of Embrace comparison

The graphics were recolored, and a few trees were added outside of the mouth of the crescent (lower left). Every particle of the original crescent and star structure remains. (Click here for site plan view.)

Representative Tancredo was right to demand removal of the crescent. It turns out that a person facing directly into the half mile wide crescent will be facing Mecca. That makes it a mihrab, the central feature around which every mosque is built. You can plant as many trees around a mosque as you want and it will still be a mosque. This is the world’s largest mosque, by a factor of a hundred.

If you want to thank Tom Tancredo for keeping his Flight 93 promise and standing up again for the honor of our murdered heroes, his phone numbers and online email form are here.

Full text of Representative Tancredo’s letter to Park Service Director Mary Bomar

November 5, 2007

The Honorable Mary A. Bomar

Director

National Park Service

U.S. Department of Interior

1849 C Street NW

Washington, DC 20240

Dear Director Bomar,

I am regrettably writing you in reference to the proposed memorial to commemorate the victims of Flight 93 which crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. As you may know, I contacted Director Mainella in late 2005 about my concerns with the design.

The appropriateness of the original design, dubbed the “Crescent of Embrace,” was questioned because of the crescent’s prominent use as a symbol in Islam – and the fact that the hijackers were radical Islamists. As I pointed out in my September 2005 letter, the use of the crescent has raised questions in some circles about whether the design would make the memorial a tribute to the hijackers rather than the victims whose mission the flights passengers helped to thwart.

When I received Director Mainella’s response to my letter on October 6, 2005, I was pleased to read her assurance that the advisory committee and the architect were amenable to “refinements in the design which will include negating any perceptions to the iconography.” I was also pleased to learn that the name of the memorial was to be changed.

Unfortunately, it appears that little if any substantive changes to the most troubling aspect of the design – the crescent shape – have been made. This deeply concerns me. As I told Director Mainella in 2005: Regardless of whether or not the invocation of a Muslim symbol by the memorial designer was intentional, I continue to believe that the use of this symbol is unsuitable for paying appropriate tribute to the heroes of Flight 93 or the ensuing American struggle against radical Islam that their historic last act has come to symbolize.

I remain committed to ensuring that this memorial is a powerful symbol for the whole nation and a testament to the courage and will of the passengers of the flight – as I am sure you are. And while I regret having to contact the Park Service again about this issue, I sincerely hope that you will direct the committee to scrap the crescent design entirely in favor of a new design that will not make the memorial a flashpoint for this kind of controversy and criticism.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Sincerely,

Tom Tancredo, M.C.

The phony redesign

To see clearly how the redesign leaves the original Mecca-oriented cescent fully intact, note that the orientation of the crescent is determined by connecting the most obtruding points of the crescent structure, then forming the perpendicular bisector to this line (red arrow):

Crescent bisector points to Mecca

The green circle shows the direction to Mecca (the “qibla” direction) from Somerset PA. It was generated using the Mecca-direction calculator at Islam.com. Just place this qibla graphic over the original Crescent of Embrace site plan and the Mecca-direction line almost exactly bisects the crescent.

Looking closely at the above graphic (click for larger image), you can see that the most obtruding tip at the bottom of the original crescent structure is the last red maple at the bottom. On top, the most obtruding tip of the crescent structure is the the end of the thousand foot long, fifty foot tall, Entry Portal Wall. Here is an artist’s rendering of the end of the Entry Portal Wall as seen in the Bowl of Embrace redesign. It shows how overtly this upper crescent tip remains intact in the redesign:

Upper crescent tip unchanged

The redesign only added the extra row of trees on the left, behind the visitors in this graphic. Notice that these trees are not even visible to a person who is facing into the crescent. They do not even affect a visitor’s experience of the crescent, never mind affect the presence or integrity of the crescent itself.

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» Filed Under 1st Amendment, Fallen Heros, News, War On Terror


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Comments

7 Responses to “Tancredo condemns continued use of giant crescent in Flight 93 Memorial”

  1. Gary Campbell on November 5th, 2007 11:02 pm

    The crescent design is apalling, disturbing, disgusting. Keep it from being built.
    If it is built, destroy it. Who is responsible for the design and what is the motive?

  2. Fred Beloit on November 6th, 2007 9:40 am

    How about a nice formal rectangular design such as is found in many of the buildings and monuments in Washington? The current design is simply an insult to the American people, nothing more.

  3. Mary on November 6th, 2007 10:57 am

    The architect wants something symbolic? How about a crescent blown into a thousand pieces? Is that symbolic enough? How about an American flag which can be seen in the air by the use of various different colored plantings?

    Who is Paul Murdoch, what is his citizenship, and what is wrong with him, why does he hate himself, why does he want to commit suicide, and what is wrong with the people in charge of the project? Where are the voices of the families of those dead? As an author has said “Liberalism is a mental disorder.”

  4. OMMAG on November 6th, 2007 2:57 pm

    Who really gives a crap what the architect wants?
    If this is what he sees as appropriate he should be dumped along with his plans and ideas.

    Now if Tancredo has the credibility and the influence to see this through he should be widely congratulated.
    This is a much better use of his time than fighting imaginary hordes of illegal immigrants from the 49th parallel.

  5. Joel (No Pundit Intended) on November 6th, 2007 2:58 pm

    I did a segment on a radio show about this topic more than a year ago. I can’t believe this is still a viable plan for a memorial to the souls aboard flight 93. How disgusting.

  6. Karen on November 6th, 2007 6:20 pm

    There are offensive aspects to the “Crescent of Embrace” design in addition to the obvious Muslim symbolism. It also completely misses the most distinctive aspect of Flight 93, which was resistance against terrorist activity in service to totalitarianism. Somewhere, this memorial must feature the famous phrase, “Let’s roll”. That’s what we need to remember.

    This memorial is exactly the wrong place to
    promote ‘reconciliation’ through dhimmitude.

  7. Cao on November 6th, 2007 6:50 pm

    We don’t know what Murdoch’s background is, but one thing is for sure; he’s connected with the extremists who want to claim this American soil for radical Islam.

    It’s a memorial mosque; and most mosques are memorials to their martyrs.

    The one in Mecca -where it points -is an open air mosque just like this one is planned to be.

    Murdoch will not publicly debate Rawls; although he has claimed he’s spoken with him to allay his concerns; he never in fact has talked with Rawls.

    And Patrick White, who is the spokesman for some of the Flight 93 families, is nothing more than a propagandist; he is filtering the information that gets to the families and tells them what to think.

    If I were a family member I’d be pretty pissed off about now…

    There is a public law that excludes the terrorists from the definition of the passengers and crew. This memorial, even in the fake redesign that hasn’t even bothered to hide these memorializing features is a sham and shouldn’t reach the construction stage.

    If it begins construction, someone should sue the designer and the Park Service, not to mention Patrick White, who’s been lying to the families.

    He just said on the G Gordon Liddy show that Alec Rawls is ’seeing what he wants to see’ and that the Washington Monument could be an islamic sundial.

    You don’t have to have even half a brain to google up islamic sundial and see that -that is a bald-faced lie. You can’t see an Islamic sundial in a telephone poll or the Washington Monument – an Islamic sundial is very specific. There are difficult mathematic calculations that are necessary to construct one; it involves shadow length at different times of the year.

    I am appalled and pissed off by all of this…

    If anyone wants to join the blogburst against this thing, contact me at caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com.