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Flight 93 father: ground zero mosque is the SECOND mosque being built on a
9/11 site
Pamela Geller, who is leading the fight against the ground zero mosque in New
York, has <a href="http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/07/911-hero-family-member-ground-zero-mosque-is-the-second-mosque-being-built-on-a-911-site-.html">posted</a>
the following letter from Tom Burnett Senior.
<strong>To our fellow 9/11 families and to all who are concerned about the
Ground Zero mega-mosque in New York:</strong>
We want everyone to know that the Park Service is right now building an even
larger Islamic victory mosque atop the Flight 93 crash site. Many of you were
outraged in 2005 when the Crescent of Embrace design was unveiled to be a
half-mile wide Islamic shaped crescent:
<a href="http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z36/AlecRawls/MockUpandCrescentBorderedWithCaptio.jpg"
target="_blank"><img src="http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z36/AlecRawls/MockUpandCrescentSidebySide22.jpg"
border="0" alt="Crescent publicity shot and Islamic crescent and star"></a>
Left: 2005 <a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05251/567702.stm">publicity
shot</a> of the Crescent of Embrace design. Right: typical Islamic crescent and
star, viewed from a similar angle.
Few people know that this giant crescent actually points to Mecca, or understand
the religious significance of this orientation. A crescent that points the
direction to Mecca is a very familiar construct in the Islamic world. Because
Muslims face Mecca for prayer, every mosque is built around a Mecca direction
indicator called a <em>mihrab</em>. The classic mihrab is crescent shaped. Here
are the two most famous mihrabs in the world:
<a href="http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z36/AlecRawls/Crescentmihrabsfull.jpg"
target="_blank"><img src="http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z36/AlecRawls/Crescentmihrabshalf.jpg"
border="0" alt="Crescent publicity shot and Islamic crescent and star"></a>
Left: the Mihrab of the Prophet, at the Prophet's mosque in Medina. Right: the
mihrab of the Great Mosque in Cordoba Spain.
<strong>Face into the crescent to face Mecca</strong>
As with the Medina and Cordoba mihrabs, a person facing into the Crescent of
Embrace will be facing Mecca. In the image below, superimposed red lines show
the orientation of the Flight 93 crescent. The green qibla circle is from an
online Mecca-direction calculator:
<a href="http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z36/AlecRawls/PlazaBisectorJPG.jpg"
target="_blank"><img src="http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z36/AlecRawls/60PlazaBisector.jpg"
border="0" alt="60%SizeMeccaOrientationGraphic"></a>
A person standing between the tips of the crescent and facing into the center of
the crescent (red arrow) will be facing almost exactly in "qibla" direction (the
Muslim prayer direction). You can verify the qibla direction from Somerset PA
using any number of <a href="http://www.qiblalocator.com/">on-line</a>
Mecca-direction calculators.
To be precise, the Crescent of Embrace points 1.8° north of Mecca, ± a tenth of
a degree. The <a href="http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2009/10/construction-drawings-released-flight.html">final
construction drawings</a> alter this orientation slightly, so that instead of
pointing a little less than two degrees north of Mecca, the actual crescent will
point less than three degrees south of Mecca. Such small deviations from Mecca
are insignificant by Islamic standards, which developed over a period of more
than a thousand years during which far flung Muslims had no accurate way to
determine the direction to Mecca.
The Park Service does not call the Crescent of Embrace a crescent anymore. Now
they call it <em>Circle of Embrace</em>, but the only actual change was to add
an extra arc of trees (planted to the rear of a person facing into the giant
crescent) that explicitly represents a broken off part of the circle. The
unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of
9/11, is just the original Crescent of Embrace. It is still a giant Islamic
shaped crescent, still pointing at Mecca.
This is the Park Service's official explanation for the design: the terrorist
attacks are depicted as smashing our peaceful circle and turning it into a giant
crescent. A clearer depiction of Islamic victory is hard to imagine, so no one
should be too surprised that the damned thing points to Mecca, and actually
turns out to be a mosque.
<strong>Other mosque features</strong>
Mosque design is based on a dozen typical mosque features, every one of which is
realized in the Crescent/Circle design, all on the same epic scale as the half
mile wide crescent-mihrab. Note, for instance, that the 93 foot tall
minaret-like Tower of Voices is topped with another Islamic-shaped crescent,
akin to the crescent-topped minarets seen in many Islamic countries:
<a href="http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z36/AlecRawls/UpTowerFull.jpg"
target="_blank"><img src="http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z36/AlecRawls/Tower%20sundial/Up-TowerDrkHighlights40Mid-contrast.jpg"
border="0" alt="60%SizeMeccaOrientationGraphic"></a>
An Islamic shaped crescent, soaring in the sky above the symbolic lives of the
40 heroes, which literally dangle down below. In Islam, there is only heaven and
hell. Symbolic damnation?
The Flight 93 mosque needs to be stopped, along with the Islamic victory mosque
at ground zero in Manhattan. May the fight against these two desecrations
strengthen each other.
Sincerely,
Tom Burnett Senior
Loving father of Flight 93 hero Tom Burnett Junior
Pamela's Atlas Shrugs <a href="http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/07/911-hero-family-member-ground-zero-mosque-is-the-second-mosque-being-built-on-a-911-site-.html#comment-6a00d8341c60bf53ef0134858e6502970c">post</a>
includes a second letter from Mr. Burnett, thanking her for her help and passing
on some information about the design selection process. (The vote for was 9 to 6
from a judging panel where family members were outnumbered 8-7 by left wing
design professionals.)
<strong>Want to join our <a href="http://www.crescentofbetrayal.com/BlogburstPage.htm">blogburst</a>
against the crescent mosque?</strong>
Just <a href="mailto:caoilfhionn1@gmail.com?cc=alec@rawls.org&subject=Blog url
and email address to add to blogburst list">send</a> your blog's url.
There is also an online <a href="http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/honorflight93/">petition</a>
that people can sign.
Contact information for the Flight 93 Memorial Project <a href="http://www.nps.gov/flni/contacts.htm">here</a>.