Error Theory

[This is the original version of the above post, which was redone for blogburst distribution.]

It is hard to believe that the State Department could do this by accident:



An Islamic crescent is a very distinct and completely unnatural geometric shape, created the intersection of two circles. This is done on basic religious principle, to make the Islamic crescent distinct from a lunar crescent and from the lit portion of any other globe in orbit around a sun. To take a natural shape like the crescent moon as a religious symbol would risk idolatry (the worship of any actual thing besides God). Thus Muslims use as their symbol a stylized and explicitly unnatural crescent shape.

So why is this unnatural crescent shape being used as an official State Department logo for Obama's Nuclear Security Summit? There is not a Muslim in the world who would miss the symbolism here:


World meeting, called by a United States president who makes a point of reminding the Islamic world that his middle name is Hussein, presided over by a large Islamic-shaped crescent. (Photo by Ron Sachs.)

Logos always use stylized shapes, but surely the State Department is aware that this particular stylized crescent shape is the closest thing Islam has to a universal insignia. (Wahabbists reject even the unnatural circle-in-circle crescent shape as idolatrous, making the only truly universal symbols of Islam the Koran, the declaration of faith--recited in the 5 times daily prayers--and the facing of Mecca for prayer, but none of these are graphic symbols.)

Maybe our State Department really is this ignorant, but more likely, as in the case of Fort Hood mass murderer Nidal Hasan, nobody was willing to make an issue of anything connected to Islam, no matter how disturbing, for fear of committing career suicide. After all, Obama has commanded all of his underlings to be as oblivious to Islam as possible. Muslim terrorists whose reading of orthodox Islamic interpretation compels them to slaughter infidels are not to be called "Muslim terrorists" or "Islamic extremists." Everyone is just supposed to ignore their Islamic motivation.


MDA logo also uses an Islamic-looking crescent


Website logo for the Missile Defense Agency.

When Frank Gaffney and others pointed out the likeness to an Islamic crescent, agency spokesman Rich Lehner was scornful:

I don't know where they would even begin to come up with something like that. It's ridiculous.

I showed Mr. Lehner where people would come up with something like that, emailing him the logos of several Islamic terror groups that contain the circle-in-circle crescent shape:



Left: Islamic Palestine Block insignia. Center: Hamas insignia. Right: PLFP insignia (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine).

Lehner admitted to me by email that he "wasn't familiar with Islamic symbols," yet he presented himself to the press and the American people as competent to speak to this issue, and since learning that he was wrong to deny that the MDA logo is similar in shape to an Islamic crescent, he has refused to issue a correction. Presumably he has also refused to pass this information on to his agency. He is not just the mouth of the MDA but its eyes and ears in dealing with the public, and he is willfully blind.

Just following orders, which is presumably what happened at the State Department as well. Any order-following employee who happened on the realization that the Nuclear Security Summit logo uses an Islamic shaped crescent would not just keep the information to himself, but would actively try to suppress it, as Mr. Lehner has done. In the MDA case I submitted a freedom of information act request for any emails, meeting minutes, etcetera, where concerns about the Islamic symbol shape might have been raised, but more likely, as in the Hasan case, everybody just kept their mouths shut.


Gaffney's unwarranted walk-back

Gaffney had noted, not just the crescent shape in the MDA logo, but also the similarity to Obama's logo:



When he discovered that the MDA logo predated the Obama administration, he began a walk-back, which he extended to the crescent shape:

It has also been observed that – rather than embracing the symbolic crescent and star, they could be interpreted as the targets of the intercepting swoosh in the MDA’s latest logo. If so, the 2009 design would presumably be offensive to Islamists, rather than evidence of submission to them.

No, the crescent cannot be interpreted as the target of the intercepting missile, because the target of the intercepting missile is explicit. It is shooting down another missile. Did Gaffney forget what the Missile Defense Agency does? The missile shot in the logo can be interpreted as defending the crescent, but it cannot be interpreted as attacking the crescent because the crescent is not a missile.


Ignorant coincidence, or stealth jihad?

The unanswered question is whether the Islamic-looking logos are the product of ignorant coincidence or Islamic supremacism. There are stealth jihadists who work in the field of Islamic symbolism, like the Los Angeles architect who designed the giant Mecca-oriented crescent that is now being built atop the Flight 93 crash site. A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a mihrab, and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. (Some mihrabs are pointed arch shaped, but the archetypical mihrab is crescent shaped.) The planned memorial will be the world's largest mosque.

Like Gaffney (sorry Frank, but you really wimped out on this one), the defenders of the crescent mosque are willing to embrace illogical excuses for their Islamic symbol shape. Asked how he could abide the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent, Patrick White, Vice President of Families of Flight 93, argued that the almost-exact Mecca-orientation cannot be intended as a tribute to Islam because the in-exactness of it (within 2° of Mecca) would be "disrespectful" to Islam.

After the cartoon jihad, Gaffney and White might be excused for thinking that Muslims will take offense at just about anything, but the fact is, orthodox Islam cares very little about how exactly anyone faces Mecca for prayer. For most of Islam's 1400 year history, far flung Muslims had no accurate way to determine the direction to Mecca. Thus it developed as a matter of religious principle that what matters is intent to face Mecca (and God).

So where did Patrick White get the idea that orientation on Mecca must be exact? From a Muslim scholar commissioned by the Park Service to answer just this question. His name is Nasser Rabbat, and he told the Park Service a flat out lie. Why? Rabbat is presumably a stealth jihadist, though he could have also been doing a personal favor for ex-classmate Paul Murdoch, the Los Angeles architect who designed the Crescent of Embrace.

This is why these possibly coincidental Islamic symbol shapes need to be properly investigated: because where there is smoke, there is sometimes fire.


Gaffney was also premature in dismissing the Obama-like character of the MDA logo

Just because the Obama-like logo was not a product of the Obama administration does not mean it was not the work of a freelance Obamaton, or even an Obama-connected logo designer.

Obama started using his logo in early 2007, when it made a huge splash in the logo-design community. The contract for the MDA logo was not let until September 2007, and the logo itself did not appear until October 2008. Thus the MDA logo was designed while Obama's logo was all the rage, and given Obama's connections in the advertising industry, his people could even have exercised some direct influence over the MDA logo.

The strong Obama likeness makes it almost certain that the MDA logo was created by an Obama partisan as a tribute to Obama. From that strong prior, the likelihood that the Islamic-shaped crescent was also intentional goes up dramatically. Our president does not emphasize the "Hussein" in "Barack Hussein Obama" for nothing.