The Dubious Flight 93 Memorial

I was originally skeptical of the complaints that the NPS official Flight 93 contains secret Muslim symbolism .


The plane landed at a high angle of attack and thus created a circular impact site. If the angle had been shallower, the impact site would have been more linear. Complaints have arisen since the proposed broken circle design resembles a Muslim crescent. This, originally, seemed akin to leftward übersecularists/anti-Christians head-spinning/projectile-vomitting over Huckabee's alleged subliminal Christian symbolism in his Christmas advertisement.

However, Deputy Superintendent Keith Newlin's statement that the passengers and the crew "broke the peace" on 9/11 indicates that the proposed Flight 93 Memorial is not being designed in their honor:

But it is still a symbol of peace,” said Rawls, especially as the Memorial Project is using it, with the circle being broken on 9/11, “so who breaks it?”

“It was the passengers and crew,” Newlin repeated, elaborating that: “They are the one’s who brought the plane down.”

“You don’t think it was the terrorists who broke the peace?” Rawls asked.

“They TRIED to break the peace,” said Newlin, “but they failed.”

My suspicion is that the current memorial designers are possibly engaging in, what they consider to be, a clever pun and word play. We've been told ad infinitum that Islam means "peace" in Arabic. From a secular point of view, the hijackers who stabbed and murdered the pilots initiated the breach of peace. The only way the designers can blame the people who attempted to regain control from the hijackers is if they view the passengers as uppity dhimmis who did not humbly submit to the will of the hijackers.

The US government should consider a further redesign that explicitly honors the sacrifice made by the people who fought against the plane's hijackers and prevented further death and destruction.

****EDIT****

I had only seen the "re-designed" project. Apparently, the original proposal was explicitly religious and was entitled "Crescent of Embrace". People protested that the memorial appeared to violate:

a) the 1st Amendment non-establishment clause
b) most people's common sense of decency since it clearly honored only the terrorists.

The NPS was forced to "re-design", which apparently entailed keeping the original design and just renaming it a "broken circle of peace" (all the fault of the unruly passengers) versus the "Crescent of Embrace".