Father denounces Islamic symbolism in Flight 93 memorial

The Associated Press reports that the father of one of the heroes of Flight 93 is now calling for his son's name to be withheld from the memorial being planned at the crash site. According to the article:

Tom Burnett Sr. served on a jury that picked the winning design, originally named "Crescent of Embrace," and said the request was "something I'd rather not do, but I can't get anyone to listen."...

Burnett, of Northfield, Minn., said he is looking for is a "thorough, honest investigation" of the design and the elements discussed by Alec Rawls, a conservative blogger from Palo Alto, Calif. Burnett said many of his concerns were based on Rawls' theories.

Rawls says the planned memorial faces toward Mecca, Islam's holiest city, and contends that a planned 93-foot tower with wind chimes would act as an Islamic sundial.

I summarized Rawls's disturbing hypothesis about the Flight 93 memorial in a blog post last month. World Ahead is planning to release a book by Rawls entitled Crescent of Betrayal: Dishonoring the Heroes of Flight 93 this fall.

Book alleges Flight 93 Memorial designs resemble a mosque

A forthcoming book from World Ahead entitled Crescent of Betrayal: Dishonoring the Heroes of Flight 93 by blogger Alec Rawls makes the startling claim that the plans approved by the commission overseeing the memorial project amount to a giant, outdoor mosque. As WND notes in an article today:

The primary feature, [Rawls] says, is the giant central crescent of what originally was called the "Crescent of Embrace" design. A person facing into this half-mile wide crescent – still present in the superficially altered "Bowl of Embrace" redesign – will be oriented almost exactly at Mecca.

That is significant, Rawls said, because a crescent that Muslims face to point them in the direction of Mecca – called a "mihrab" – is the central feature around which every mosque is built.

Judi McLeod at CanadaFreePress succinctly summarizes Rawls's assertion that Islamic symbolism is utilized throughout other elements of the memorial, including a minaret tower, a sun dial, and 44 commemorative glass blocks placed along the flight path -- for a plane that had 40 passengers and crew members, plus 4 hijackers. Taken together, Rawls asserts, these elements suggest the planned memorial would amount to a mosque "built on an epic scale."

McLeod then juxtaposes this alleged use of Islamic symbolism with the steadfast Christian faith displayed by Todd Beamer on that tragic day. McLeod writes:

“After passengers were herded to the back of the jet, Beamer called the GTE Customer Center in Oakbrook, Illinois. He told supervisor Lisa Jefferson about the hijacking. The passengers were planning to jump the terrorists, he said.”

And then, Beamer, who spent his days on earth as an evangelical believer, asked Jefferson to pray with him.

Beamer, who kept the faith even in the horror of Flight 93, will, along with his fellow passengers and crew, be commemorated with what Rawls calls an “outdoor mosque”.

As McLeod implies, a memorial that relies so heavily on Islamic symbolism that it might even be called a mosque is not a fitting tribute for the brave men and women who perished on that flight. Let's hope that the project's commission reaches the same conclusion and orders a change in the memorial's design.