Flight 93 memorial: 'Giant mosque'

The planned crescent-shaped "memorial to heroes" of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania is nothing less than a huge outdoor mosque that pays homage to Islam, charges the author of a new book.

Alec Rawls' "Crescent of Betrayal: Dishonoring the Heroes of Flight 93," published by World Ahead, documents a long list of Islamic and terrorist memorializing features in the Flight 93 National Memorial.

The primary feature, he 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.
Rawls said it seems impossible such startling revelations could go unreported, but Pennsylvania newspapers have ignored him.

He learned from a reporter at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that editors knew about the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent in September 2005 when the design was first unveiled. But the editors decided the information should not be published, accusing critics of being paranoid bigots.

So we have the Post-Gazette deciding not to simply report news, but deciding to withhold information.

"Like those who look at innocent kids trick-or-treating at Halloween and see only the devil's work," wrote the editors at the time, "a few small and suspicious minds couldn't look past the crescent to see a remarkably sensitive design."

Rawls said western Pennsylvania newspapers have been in a "virtual state of war" with him over the past two weeks as they report 9/11 family members accuse him of spreading falsehoods. Meanwhile, he is running large, full-color ads in the Somerset Daily American, "providing readers with graphical proof" the memorial is actually a huge, outdoor mosque.

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