It’s been a couple weeks since Alec Rawls has put out a new installment of the ongoing Flight 93 memorial blogburst, and this one consists of entirely fresh material.  It’s truly fascinating to see the development of architect Paul Murdoch’s memorial design, because we can see in it a consistent and obsessive preoccupation with Islamic imagery and culture.  As if the current plan isn’t full of quite enough Islamic imagery and symbolism, it is remarkable to discover that even preliminary designs were unmistakably centered on Islamic themes.

I’ve said all along that Murdoch’s intentions are irrelevant in the end, but the material in today’s blogburst essay nonetheless convincingly supports claims that the Islamic character of the monument design is intentionally contrived.

If it smells like a bull and snorts like a bull, then chances are . . .

In this week’s edition of the Flight 93 blogburst, author Alec Rawls explains some of the finer points of contention in our claims about the blatant Islamic imagery in the monument design, and he calls on heavy hitters Allahpundit and Michelle Malkin to rejoin the fight against the planned memorial.  Alec describes in this post how some of the most damning features of the memorial plan involve symbolic and thematic repetition and restatement, implying conscious intent on the part of the designer:

Murdoch constantly provides proof that his possible Islamic and terrorist memorializing structure is intentional, often by repetition.

As one trained in artistic criticism who can spot thematic restatement on a speeding mosquito’s license plate at a hundred yards, I concur wholeheartedly, but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it simply doesn’t matter what the architect’s intention was when he sat down to design the memorial.  The monument is what it is, and it is just a humongous mosque, pure and simple—knowledge of forethought notwithstanding.  And I hate to burst Allahpundit’s bubble, but his quip about needing a protractor is ludicrous in light of the crescent redundancy.  One needs nothing but eyes that see.  How many groves of trees in this world can he point to, inside an enormous crescent, that themselves are laid out as crescents?  While he’s looking, he might want to try to locate a giant tower that forms a perfect crescent in the sky when viewed from the ground.  The Tower of Voices likely will be the only such monstrosity in existence.  

If it is even possible to interpret the redundant structural and landscape images as sympathetic to radical Islam and the 9/11 terrorists, they WILL be so viewed by jihadis. 

Is that what the Memorial Project and its supporters want?

This week, Alec Rawls of Error Theory focuses on some of the most annoying aspects among all the offensive memorial plan features. If you’re one of those people who’s not convinced, who thinks that we’re just making a mountain of a molehill, then you need to view the design features Alec details in today’s blogburst installment. These aspects of the design convinced me a while back that the disturbing Islamic imagery and character of the memorial plan could not have been fortuitously accomplished. I will not elaborate because Alec’s fair presentation throughout the series needs no clarification or amplification. See for yourself.

Far as I’m concerned, proof positive of Islamist sympathies on the part of the project’s supporters is their incessant need to explain things to us, as Islam itself is continually explicated for us ignorant unbelievers. Like Islam and Islamic terrorism, the memorial design provides us with so many unfortunate misconceptions and silly misunderstandings, don’t you know. We poor dimwitted dullards require education and illumination, both in Islam and in art. We’re just letting our prejudices cloud our understanding and appreciation of culture, of beauty, of the sacred. But fear not. Our intellectual and moral superiors will clear the air for us.

As for the design’s much-trumpeted aesthetic achievements, blow on this: Great art does not require a user manual. Crescent of Embrace, Circle of Embrace, Tower of Voices, Sacred Ground—this crap is simply unctuous and unimaginatively contrived with all the iconic hallmarks of New Age, multicultural, Islam-is-peace, diversity training hooey. It’s as repulsive aesthetically as it is conceptually.

Anyway, architect Paul Murdoch and his supporters missed a page in the manual. I remain unconvinced that Islam is peace.

So I’m certainly not yet ready to buy that Islamic jihad can be translated into peace and understanding.

This week’s blogburst calls on several high-profile bloggers to join—or make that “rejoin”—the crucial fight against the planned Flight 93 memorial abomination. Of course, the reason the folks noted are heavy hitters is that they feature timely, unique, fresh, and original content on their weblogs, so maybe they feel that the so far weekly blogbursts detract from their power profiles. But the Flight 93 memorial is too important an issue to be subordinated to merely personal concerns. If we lose the no-brainer battles, we certainly cannot expect to win the major battles or the looming war to come, and the Flight 93 monument issue is categorically one such no-brainer. We simply cannot accept this disgrace to our fallen heroes, this slap in the face to the families of the deceased, this patent pandering both to our enemies and to the sniveling cowards who appease and approve them.

The planned memorial is a terrorist memorial mosque. This is an enemy plot . . .

I won’t be able to make the trip to Somerset this August, but I’d love to meet Tom Burnett Sr., father of one of the heroes on doomed Flight 93. I’d also love to meet Alec and all of the other authors from the blogburst blogroll. Mostly, I’d like to see the crash site, where a group of valiant Americans looked past their immediate circle and embraced immortality on behalf of us all.

Except for a few minor changes and corrections, the following is, as before, the work of Alec Rawls. I have turned off comments on the post to encourage you to comment at Alec’s weblog, Error Therapy. Better yet—and I know Alec will concur—tell it to Charles, Michelle, Ed and the rest. Express your astonishment that their illustrious names aren’t found in the blogroll.

Tell ‘em the great Haid Dasalami sent you.