Yup, and if you read it the right way round it begins with a crescent.
I don’t know whether fundamentalist Muslims would really be all that agitated by desecration of the crescent symbol. Just because they have it on flags and stuff doesn’t necessarily mean it’s hugely important to them. Maybe it’s like the stars on the American flag. If somebody wanted to offend the USA, they might look at the flag and say, “Hey! They have a huge load of stars on their flag! Therefore, the star design must be incredibly significant to them!” And then they’d go out and publically burn pictures of stars, and wonder why Americans were just looking at them funny. Then, of course, they’d be torn apart by enraged Somalians.
What the hell does the crescent even symbolize to Islam? Was the Prophet Mohammed a werewolf or something? Was he hugely fond of French pastry? Did he miraculously prophesy the Children’s Television Workshop? “Today’s beheading was brought to you by the letter C.” Is it his middle initial? Mohammed Charles Prophet?
Anyway, if fundamentalist Islam were likely to declare a jihad over misuse of the crescent symbol, they probably would have done it back when DreamWorks Pictures started up, with their studio logo depicting a lazy white kid fishing while using the symbol of Islam as an ass-cushion.
Come to think of it, maybe the murderous Islamic reaction to cartoons of the Prophet simply reflects their deathly fear that DreamWorks might one day give Mohammed the same animated treatment as they did Moses in The Prince of Egypt, complete with flaccid musical numbers and the comic vocal talents of Martin Short.
Ask Jack Chick.
Pretty much diddly squat. It’s only on the flags of a load of Islamic countries because the crescent moon and a star used to be the logo of the Ottoman Empire.
Some more info.
It’s was actually a more or less secular symbol of the early Muslim kingdoms. While it’s taken on a semi-religious meaning nowadays, I think your right that it’s not the muslim equivalent of the Cross.
I have to say that the business with the crescent moon and star symbol annoys me a bit, though. You can obviously never actually see a star in front of the moon. It’s clearly really a a crescent moon and the International Space Station.
I read that the star & crescent in Islam represent the position of Venus & the crescent moon the night Mohammed received the first revelation of the Quran. Have no idea how accurate that is. For a while in the late 1970’s, the symbols seemed to have been used by some Wiccans to represent the Lord & the Lady, but I don’t think that usage endured.
Why not take a photo of the urinal with the cross, and post it on a blog where strangers can come along and comment on it.
Let us know if you get any interesting results from outraged Christians.
I always assumed the crescent was as important a symbol to Islam as the cross is to Christianity. FWIW, the Muslim medical relief organization (the Muslim version of the Red Cross) is called the Red Crescent.
I was told that the connection was between Islam and the crescent symbol was the importance of the calendar in Muslim rituals.
I’m not sure why that’s relevant; the Red Cross movement is purely secular and the symbol of the red cross on a white field is simply the inverse of the Swiss Flag (reflecting the role of the Swiss in establishing the Red Cross). It is explicitly not a Christian symbol (though the cross on the Swiss flag probably is). Nevertheless, Islamic countries were wary of establishing organizations with what could appear to be a Christian symbol, so they petitioned to use a different symbol. As a secular, national symbol with largely coincidental religious overtones, the red crescent rather nicely parallels the red cross symbol, IMO.
I think the real question here is why, in 2007, are you using an outhouse?
Neither did the Muslims who invaded Spain 200 years before the Crusades.
You’re not including the people who died in the cartoon riots and the woman who faced 40 lashes and 6 months for the teddy bear as “strained examples”, I hope.
So far. Directly, that is.
There’s something weird going on here.
I mean, being angry about shitty things the people actually do, or threaten to do, that makes perfect sense.
But there’s something just a bit wrong about getting heated up over shitty things that you bet they would do, if you goaded them into it. Your hypothetical might be just incorrect. Maybe they wouldn’t rise to your bait.
Perhaps I didn’t make my point clear. It has been said that Islam, lacking a reformation, is in approximately the same place now – developmentally – as Christianity was during the Crusades. While Christianity now preaches tolerance and co-existance, Islam’s frequent diatribes against Israel are reminiscent of the mind-set of the Crusades.
But the Crusaders didn’t have nuclear weapons. If they had had them, they had an excuse to use them on the heathens. Today’s Islamic “crusaders” do, and a similar medieval philosophy is all that is needed to put them to use.
Today’s islamic “crusaders” have nuclear weapons? Where?
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Nothing else to add, but I never get to use the code tag. 
They actually tried this back in Henry VIII’s time–painting red crosses on the indoor walls of the palace, in the hope that no-one would dare to pee on such a holy symbol (and thus basic hygiene would prevail). It didn’t work.
I’m saying this to avoid the rest of the OP, which is giving me a headache.
Peeing on the cross…that’s a paddling.
Eating meat on Fridays…that’s a paddling.
Teaching evolution in public schools…oh, you better believe that’s a paddling.
Musicat writes:
> Perhaps I didn’t make my point clear. It has been said that Islam, lacking a
> reformation, is in approximately the same place now – developmentally – as
> Christianity was during the Crusades. While Christianity now preaches
> tolerance and co-existance, Islam’s frequent diatribes against Israel are
> reminiscent of the mind-set of the Crusades.
But in the Middle Ages, Islamic societies tended to be more tolerant of Christians and Jews than Christian societies were of Moslems and Jews. You’re assuming a straight-line theory of development of toleration here, which doesn’t seem to be true. It’s seems to me that what you’re asserting is that Society A is more tolerant than Society B in year X, therefore in year Y (where Y is later than X), Society will be more tolerant than Society B. You’re also assuming that it’s possible to make a general statement about the level of tolerance over all of Society A and all of Society B. That’s not clear. Both “Christian civilization” and “Moslem civilization,” to the extent that they exist, are highly diverse and exhibit a wide variety of levels of toleration.
…will they demand that westerners adhere to their weird prejudices? Like insisting that women wear burkas to the beach? Bikinis will become illegal-they offend muslim eyes. What about depictions of the prophet? Will it be illegal in the USA, do depict Muhhamed in a history course?I see the danish cartoon flap as a harbinger of things to come -maybe we should all convert?