Flt 93 mother on Crescent jury: “I don’t want to reach out to those people! They murdered my daughter!” [Reader Post]

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Alec Rawls, who has been working with Tom Burnett Sr. to stop the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93, explains the circumstances (related by Mr. Burnett in 2008, but not published until now).

Mr. Burnett had been telling his fellow design competition jurors that the crescent is a well known Islamic symbol. In addition to the giant central crescent (now called a broken circle) Tom also objected to the minaret-like Tower of Voices. “I made a point at that meeting,” says Mr. Burnett, “to tell people that we have an Islamist design here that can’t go forward, please, stay with me.”

One of the left-wing design professionals on the jury, Tom Sokolowski (then director of Pittsburg’s Andy Warhol Museum) thought that objecting to the crescent shape, just because it happens to be used by Muslims, was anti-Muslim bigotry. In a rude attempt to shut down criticism, Sokolowski actually called Mr. Burnett “asinine” for objecting to the huge Islamic-shaped Crescent. (Sokolowski would later repeat this performance to the press, calling a local preacher “asinine,” “small minded,” “bigoted,” “repellant,” and “disgusting” for protesting the Crescent design.)

It was in this atmosphere, charged with universal awareness amongst the jurors that the giant crescent was indeed a well-known Islamic symbol shape, but also charged with uncertainty as to whether people would be allowed to mention this fact, that another family member, Sandra Felt, started to explain what she liked about the Crescent design. She liked the “embracing” nature of it, says Mr. Burnett. She liked the way it “reached out…”

At which point another family member “lost it” (Mr. Burnett’s description), screaming in agony: “I don’t want to reach out to those people! THEY MURDERED MY DAUGHTER!”

The Park Service claims it “lost” the minutes

This extreme level of conflict on the jury over perceived Islamic symbolism should have come out years ago. The jury included a designated, non-voting, minutes taker. This was not supposed to be a private deliberation. These were volunteer citizens, doing the people’s business, and the jury minutes were supposed to be made available to the public.

The Memorial Project and the Park Service claim that the minutes were “lost.” No doubt, but that doesn’t mean the loss was accidental, and defenders of the Crescent design had good reason to make the minutes go away. Any faithful record would have been explosive, revealing these fierce objections from multiple Flight 93 family members to the blatant Islamic symbolism in the Crescent design.

The ballot wasn’t supposed to be secret either, but the Park Service refuses to account for what they claim was a 9 to 6 tally in favor of the Crescent design. What does 9 to 6 even mean on what was a ranked vote amongst three designs? Did every ballot that did not rank the Crescent last get counted as a vote in favor?

The whole thing is fishy, and there is one most obvious reason why the defenders of the Crescent might want to keep the vote details hidden. The seven family members on the jury were outnumbered by eight academics and design professionals. Thus all six of the votes against the Crescent could have come from the kin, with only Sandra Felt voting for it. This is more than just possible. It is likely.

Another mother of the murdered said only that she agreed with Mr. Burnett, and he thought that the other two men amongst the family members (Gerald Bingham and Ed Root) were on his side as well, though both have since spoken out against his ongoing effort to rescind the chosen design. Bingham and Root are angry at the anguish that the families are still being put through over the memorial design, but could such men have voted for the Crescent in the first place, in the face of that mother’s anguished cry?

A vicious left-wing ideologue like Sokolowski, yes, but it seems almost inconceivable that family members could vote for a design that other family members saw as a tribute to the terrorists, or at the very least, as reaching out to Islam. Since Bingham and Root are willing to speak out, can they please tell us whether they voted for the Crescent? If they didn’t, then the vote amongst the family members was at least 5 to 2 against.

In support of Powerline’s John Hinderaker

The immediate impetus for making these revelations public now is to support John Hinderaker’s 10th anniversary 9/11 post:

You may remember that there was considerable controversy when the design for the Flight 93 memorial was unveiled. It was called “Crescent of Embrace.” The crescent is, of course, the central symbol of Islam, and the design apparently was intended to symbolize some sort of rapprochement with that religion. The winning design was chosen by a jury, and some members of the jury, including Thomas Burnett, whose son was one of the heroes who brought down the airplane, vigorously opposed it. As I understand it, no one on the jury questioned the Muslim reference inherent in the crescent, but a majority believed that it would somehow be “healing” for the memorial to be, in part at least, a sort of tribute to Islam.

That was John’s response to Tom Sr.’s revelations, and his statement is fully supportable, but for people to know why, the supporting information has to be available to everyone. Now it is.

Given the conflict between Mr. Burnett and Tom Sokolowski, there could not have been any doubt in any juror’s mind that the Crescent was an Islamic symbol shape. Indeed, the jury made a specific request, not honored by the Park Service or by architect Paul Murdoch, that:

The crescent should be referred to as ‘the circle or arc,’ or other words that are not tied to specific religious iconography.

The only question was whether the use of this Islamic symbol shape should be seen as bad, and for a majority to favor the crescent design, a majority just have decided that it wasn’t bad, even in the face of family members who found it horrific.

Maybe these left-wing design professionals actually wanted to torture the families, but the generous interpretation is the one John gives: that they saw the Crescent design as symbolizing “some sort of rapprochement” with Islam. Certainly that seems to have been Sandra Felt’s idea, and at least one family member not on the jury thought it obvious that this must have been the intent of everyone who voted for the Crescent design. Mark Bingham’s mother, Alice Hoglan, just wished that the outreach to Islam had been made explicit:

The Flight 93 Memorial selection committee has admitted to misgivings about the word ‘crescent.’ I almost wish that instead they could claim they deliberately chose the crescent design as a gesture of peace and unity with the Islamic world. If they were to make that claim, I would not object. I would welcome such a compassionate gesture.

Unfortunately, regardless of the intentions of the jurors, architect Paul Murdoch did not have a compassionate gesture in mind.

A terrorist memorial mosque

Mr. Hinderaker’s anniversary post does not investigate whether the giant crescent actually does point to Mecca (allowing it to serve as an Islamic mihrab), or whether the Tower of Voices really is a year-round-accurate Islamic prayer-time sundial. Perfectly understandable, as these claims take some work to check and John had only just learned that the memorial controversy is still aboil, after thinking that it had been resolved in 2005.

But he does provide links to the evidence, and notes that some of it is accessible just by looking. Like why in the world does the Tower of Voices have an Islamic-shaped crescent on top?

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The minaret-like Tower of Voices is formed in the shape of a crescent and is cut at an angle at the top so that its crescent arms reach up to the sky, as seen on mosque minarets across most of the Islamic world.

Literally dangling down below these symbolic Islamic heavens are the symbolic lives of the 40 heroes. This symbolic damnation is repeated over and over in Murdoch’s design. The memorial is not just any mosque, it is an al Qaeda victory mosque.

So much for trying to reach out to Islam without bothering to vet what part of Islam is being reached out to. Nothing could be worse for the decent people of the Islamic world than to hand a great victory to the very worst in the Islamic world. That is the problem with doing this Muslim-outreach thing on the sly.

Knowing the American people would never go along with intentional Islamic outreach, the Memorial Project had to cover up what actually went on in the jury room, and once they got into cover-up mode, they just kept covering up revelation after revelation about what is actually contained in Murdoch’s design.

Sokolowski’s own vile cover-up: attributing the Crescent choice to the families, after vilifying family members who opposed the Crescent design

Here is how the Post-Gazette reported on local preacher Ron McRae, who believed that architect Paul Murdoch had intended the Crescent as a tribute to Islam:

It’s a memorial to the terrorists,” McRae said. “It’s not a memorial to the innocent Americans who died there.”

But Tom Sokolowski, the director of the Andy Warhol Museum, and one of the Stage II jury members, said that claim is “asinine.”

“If the families of the 40 people who were killed felt this was an appropriate symbol to honor their loved ones, then I think he is delusional,” he said. “To take this small-minded, bigoted view is disgusting and repellent.”

Sokolowski knew that family members on the jury had taken that exact same “disgusting and repellent” view because he had said as much to their faces, and now here he was pretending that it was McRae, not himself, who was vilifying the families. Absolute moral trash of the highest order, even if he is just a feckless little worm. By intent, he is as evil as Murdoch.

Gordon Felt’s defense of the Crescent design is also belied by what transpired on the jury:

Gordon Felt, whose brother, Edward, died in the crash, called the focus on the crescent an “unfortunate distraction,” from the fourth anniversary memorial service tomorrow at the crash site.

Still, he continued, “It would be silly of us to have some sort of symbolism [in the memorial] that would be offensive to people.”

This from the man whose own sister in law had spoken in favor of the “reaching out” symbolism of the Crescent, symbolism that was seen by other family members as intending to reach out to Islam, inspiring the most dreadful offense. All this is FACT, and Gordon Felt waves off any thought of it as “silly.”

Did Gerald Bingham lie in his letter to the Memorial Project?

Mr. Bingham’s letter to the Memorial Project (p. 21 here) was timed to counter Mr. Burnett’s appearance at the 2008 Project meeting. It in-effect calls Mr. Burnett a liar, denying that Tom Sr. had ever raised any protest about Islamic symbolism when they served on the jury together:

Attention: Joanne Hanley
RE: Mr. Tom Burnett’s disapproval of the Memorial scheduled to be built honoring those on United Flight 93

Please read the following letter into the minutes of the Flight 93 board meeting scheduled for August 2, 2008.

I served on the Jury to select the final design for the Flight 93 Memorial along with Mr. Burnett. As I recall, Tom liked the design with a line of rocks along a 2 ½ mile walking trail. He indicated in his discussion with me that when it came to final vote that this would be the design of his choice. After the vote was taken and his design was not chosen he was very upset. Not once during these discussions did he mention that the design chosen by a majority vote of the committee had anything to do with a “symbol to the terrorist” as he is now saying.

The final design was chosen because its’ layout fit the landscape where the plane crashed and kept with the surrounding area.

I believe that Mr. Burnett has forgotten that this memorial is for 40 individual people who were on a flight taken over by terrorists and that all 40 of those people became heroes that day. All he is accomplishing at this point is causing other families aggravation and needless controversy.

We need to forge ahead with the plans as voted upon and join together as one just like our loved-ones did on United Flight 93, September 11, 2001.

Respectfully,
Gerald Bingham
Father of Mark Bingham

Mr. Bingham’s denial that Tom Sr. said anything about Islamic symbolism is contradicted by numerous data points, starting with the fact that Mr. Burnett spoke out to the press immediately after Crescent design was unveiled in 2005:

Tom Burnett Sr., whose son died in the crash, said he made an impassioned speech to his fellow jurors about what he felt the crescent represented.

“I explained this goes back centuries as an old-time Islamic symbol,” Burnett said. “I told them we’d be a laughing stock if we did this.”

But his fellow jurors — and it turns out, many of the other family members — disagree with his interpretation.

“I got blown off.”

But not entirely. The jurors, in their final report, suggested the name of Murdoch’s design be changed from crescent to something with less religious significance, like an arc or circle.

This is corroborated by Helene Fried, who helped to manage the design competition:

Fried said the connection was raised by some history buffs on the jury during three days of deliberations last month.

Compare “old time Islamic symbol,” with “history buffs.” And if the Jury’s statement that the Crescent name is “tied to specific religious iconography” was not in response to Mr. Burnett’s protests, where did it come from? Is Bingham saying that others on the jury were more vehement than Mr. Burnett in pointing out and objecting to this tie?

Then there is Mr. Burnett’s account of Tom Sokolowski calling him “asinine” for objecting to the Islamic symbolism of the crescent. This is corroborated by the fact that Sokolowski used the exact same language to condemn Pastor Ron McRae. Altogether, the evidence is overwhelming that it is Gerald Bingham who is lying when he accuses Mr. Burnett of lying.

For the sake of the families

Bingham makes his motivation clear. He opposes Mr. Burnett because:

All he is accomplishing at this point is causing other families aggravation and needless controversy.

But notice what Bingham doesn’t say. He is willing to discuss how Mr. Burnett voted, but he keeps his own vote secret. (Gerald Bingham has been divorced from Mark Bingham’s mother Alice Hoglan since the 1970’s, so her stated approval of Muslim-outreach in the Flight 93 Memorial should not be linked to him.)

If Bingham voted for the Crescent, his secrecy about his vote would make no sense. Everyone from Sokolowski on up appeals to the will of the families. Bingham himself does this. These appeals obviously turn on whether the nine votes for the Crescent design came from family members or from the cadre of left-wing design professionals who outnumbered the families 8 to 7.

For Bingham’s objective of ending the controversy, the most weighty thing he could say is that he voted for it, but he doesn’t. And how could he have voted for the Crescent? This is a man who is so keen to avoid pain for the families that he is even willing to tell slanderous lies about the one family member he blames for dragging out the controversy. Surely such a man would never have voted in the first place for a design that was already causing the most extreme anguish to multiple family members.

Ed Root is also loud in his condemnations but mum about his vote

Jury member Ed Root also attacks Mr. Burnett and Mr. Rawls for continuing to oppose the Crescent design (p. 22 here):

Those who oppose this Memorial, for whatever misplaced reasons, have voiced their belief on numerous occasions. That is a striking example of the democracy we hold dear. When those unfounded beliefs turn to a zealotry that attempts to overthrow the very democratic process that selected the winning design it does a terrible disservice to those who worked long and diligently during the design process and, to me, it mocks those very 40 that we long to honor. Our nation is one of laws and due process. To let a few destroy what many have built is not democracy, but tyranny.

Yet Root too keeps his vote secret. It could just be embarrassment, not wanting to admit that he voted for such an obvious perversion, crammed to the gills with Islamic-shaped crescents. Or it could be that he was better than that, and despite the magnificence of Murdoch’s Crescent, was unwilling to vote for as design that other family members found so appallingly offensive.

Mr. Burnett says he liked Mr. Root, and it is easy to see why. They both believe the passengers and crew were fighting, not just to stop the terrorist attack, but to get back to their families:

“The people of Flight 93 wanted to live,” Root said while visiting “Father Al” and the chapel in July. “There’s no doubt in my mind, they didn’t want to die.”

That distinguishes the passengers and crew from the hijackers, in Root’s eyes.

“[The passengers and flight attendants] wanted to try to get control of the plane and, if possible, to survive,” he said. “But they knew from all of the phone calls that if they didn’t do something, it would be far worse. So it really is this comparison of philosophies of a free society versus a terrorist society. One is, their cause is death; the other is, their cause is life. And that’s what makes this worthy of a national memorial. That’s what makes this worth being remembered.

Maybe he can join with Mr. Burnett in demanding an explanation for Memorial Superintendent Keith Newlin’s claim that it was the passengers and crew who crashed the airplane: “They are the one’s who brought the plane down,” says Newlin. This is his way of avoiding the implication that the circle-breaking crescent-creating theme of the memorial can only be depicting the actions of the terrorists. “[The terrorists] TRIED to break the peace,” says Newlin, “but they failed.” Surely Root would disagree.

But Root is wrong about who is refusing to respect democratic principles. Their 15 person jury does not take precedence over the will of the nation, clearly expressed in the national uproar over the original Crescent of Embrace design. The Memorial Project promised to remove the offensive features—the Islamic symbol shapes—but they never did. They just disguised them.

“The difference is at best a subtle one”

Thanks to Powerline for exposing this as well:

Crescent and Bowl side by side
Crescent of Embrace, left. Circle of Embrace, right.

They call it a broken circle now, but the unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11, is just the original Crescent of Embrace. All they did was recolor the graphics, then add an extra arc of trees, placed to the rear of a person facing into the giant crescent, that explicitly represents a broken off part of the circle. As a result, Murdoch’s circle-breaking crescent-creating theme is now even more explicit, and so are its obvious terrorist-memorializing implications.

Will other front-line conservative blogs and publications take notice?

John Hinderaker is a top lawyer, a lifelong expert at evaluating evidence. When he announces that there is serious substance to the Flight 93 controversy, serious people ought to listen.

Everybody understands the difficulty. With multiple Flight 93 family members crying their anguish against anyone who prolongs the controversy, people need to actually look at the facts before taking a position. So take a look! MANY of the facts are perfectly straightforward and utterly damning. Not everyone can be as brave as Pamela Geller, but no one should let the whiff of danger stop them from examining this most important issue.

We’re talking no less than the re-hijacking of Flight 93 by an actual al Qaeda sympathizing architect. Think 9/11 folks. The whiff of danger should be an attractant, a chance to tackle a hijacker. Those lied-to and in some cases lying family members need to have their fat pulled out of the fire. Ride to the sound of the guns.

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President Bush and the Park Service are equally to blame. Religion of Peace my ass. Fools.

Why did the protesting members of the jury not go public, and instead just allow themselves to be rolled?

Wow! I had just been wondering about this outrage. Hadn’t ready anything aout it in a while; thought maybe it had been resolved.

What do we DO at this point? Did I miss something?

The solution is called a dozer. It is better to dig a hole in the earth, push this disaster in it and cover it up, than to leave this memorial to terrorism and treason as an insult to all Americans, but especially to the heroes who stood up to Islamic Radicalism and terror.

Dig a little pond and stock it with fish as a tribute to the morons who are willing to capitulate to terrorism and Islamic Fanatics.

This so called memorial needs to be wiped away from the surface of America. It stands as a memorial to treason, terror, and treachery. Demand that it be demolished.

Why are you trying to appease the Arabs by using Arabic numbers?

This is outrageous!!! – Liberals are sinking to an even lower low…. I think Liberals live in the same vacuum as those who live and work in DC…. I continually shake my head in disbelief….. The more I read crap like this the more I believe Liberalism Really IS a Sickness..

@Wm T Sherman: Mr. Burnett spoke out immediately after the Crescent design was selected, as quoted in the post. All were severely pressured to express unanimous support, regardless of how they voted, out of respect for each other and the process supposedly. The Park Service even went so far as to claim that the jurors did enter a unanimous agreement to support the chosen design, a vote/agreement that Mr. Burnett says absolutely never took place, though it does strike me as possible that, knowing Mr. Burnett would never go along, they executed such a pinky-swear when he was out of the room, and in that way manipulated the more manipulable members of the jury into remaining quiet.

Skookum, I like the way you think.

It’s going to take a little over a year to fix this. Unless there should be some sort of spontaneous action.

I think the key is to quietly bulldoze it. Like they quietly built it.

I lived in Pennsylvania until January 31st of this year.  Another thing that made people mad was that the terrorists who hijacked the plane were on the original list for the memorial.  They were listed with the other passengers.

@Smorgasbord: The idea that the terrorists were listed with the passengers and crew seems to be a telephone-game mis-translation of something equally bad that actually IS in the original design. The lives of the passengers and crew are represented by 40 inscribed translucent blocks, emplaced along the flight path, but it architect Paul Murdoch also included four more inscribed translucent memorial blocks emplaced along the flight path, which is the number of terrorists on Flight 93, but these extra blocks are not inscribed with their names.

Three of the extra “glass blocks” were placed on a separate section of Memorial Wall that was centered on the bisector of the giant crescent, in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag. These were inscribed with the 9/11 date, so the date goes to the Islamic star: the date goest to the terrorists.

The 44th glass block sits at the end of the Entry Portal Walkway. This walkway symbolically “breaks the circle” at the upper crescent tip, turning out circle of peace into the giant Islamic-shaped crescent. Thus the 44th block commemorates the terrorists’ circle-breaking, crescent-creating feat, to be inscribed: “A field of honor forever.”

@Alec Rawls: #11
Since I was getting ready to move, then actually moved and visited relatives along the way, I haven’t followed this story. Thanks for the update and I hope the “mosque” will be destroyed eventually.

I read a story about someone spreading pig blood on land some Muslims wanted to build on. They said the Muslim forbids building on land contaminated with pig blood. If I would have known that I would have driven over to the “mosque” while I was living in Pennsylvania. Is it too late to contaminate the land with pig blood?

Another way is to bury a pig like this group did:

Pig Power and Ground Zero

Local farmers in central Pennsylvania could put a stop to the project.

Each farmer donates one pig. One farmer voluteers to drive the truck.

Turn the pigs loose to run across the field. Record it on video, and post it on the Net.

No more Muslim monument, because the Muslims would now be the ones demanding that their symbol not be placed upon ground where pigs had run loose.

The Leftists couldn’t argue against the Muslims without giving away their original intent of having a Muslim design.

However, I could picture the Muslim-in-Chief putting the full resources of the FBI onto the investigation of the farmers.

Show up at the sight with one of those McDonalds breakfast meals (made with sausage) and leave the litter (in the trash can) of course.

Next time I drive by Shanksville, I’ll stop by and leave a pound of bacon in the trash can.

The Shanksville Memorial is despicable.
But it is only symbolism, not flesh and blood.
Don’t like its symbolism?
Don’t visit it.
There is an excellent alternative.

Flight 93 was headed from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco, California that day.
There is an already completed memorial for the heros of Flight 93 in Union City, CA.
It is a wonderful memorial.

This Memorial offers a space with feelings of remembrance for loved ones lost, and thoughts of a positive hope for the future.

The Memorial has a “remembrance stone” that is placed in a flowing line for each individual person who’s life was lost on Flight 93. This exemplifies that each person was more than just a moment in history, or a victim linked to such a horrifying event. The Memorial has put a face to each soul lost on that fateful flight.

Each individual’s name, age, and hometown is engraved on each stone. On the front side of the 40 stones is a polished stainless steel mirror to reflect the viewers own image to signify that it could have been any one of us aboard Flight 93 that day. The back of the 40 remembrance stones were left unfinished to signify that the heros had unfinished lives.

Homepage
Photos

Notice that the Union City Memorial is non-denominational.

In order to prevent Muslims from wanting the land, I think it requires more than merely a package of bacon in a garbage can.

I think that the pigs must run over the land, physically touching it. Or, as another poster mentioned, pigs’ blood must be spilled.

Of course, some local pig farmers could start a rumor that they brought in pigs’ blood after a slaughter…

It would then be up to the Muslims to prove otherwise.

As for the “don’t visit it” argument, tax dollars were used to develop the idea, and more tax dollars will be used to build it.

So, yes, those of us that don’t like it do have a voice in the design.

@Tom Kovach:

Tom,
There are a whole lot of things my tax dollars go towards that I don’t like.
Years ago, Joan Baez tried to with-hold that portion of her tax money that went toward war.
She went to jail for that.

As long as it was possible to change the Shanksville design I fought it.
That ship has sailed.

Now it is being built according to modified plans.
The modifications do not diminish the many Islamic symbolisms inherent in the design.
And, on top of that, I think there is no less appropriate symbol for heros who acted against terrible odds than the passive wind chimes hanging from the ”Tower of Voices.”
Who are they kidding?

So, I will not visit it.
But I have made two visits to the Flight 93 Memorial in Union City.
It is outstanding.

I have been to the Memorial at the Pentagon as well.
I plan to get to NYCity for a visit to Ground Zero one day.
God willing.

Nan,

You make some good points. And, your philosophy seems to parallel that of Saint Basil the Great. Among his famous quote is: “It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”

My paraphrase: “It is better to start a rumor about pigs’ blood on the ground than to look at a pro-terrorist memorial every day.”

On pigs being any kind deterrent for Muslims, people need to remember that Islam is a purely instrumental religion. ALL of its rules are conditional on their service to Islamic conquest. The prohibition on pork is useful as a lever for forcing schools, hospitals, etcetera, to comply with sharia law by serving halal meals, creating a foot in the door to ever greater demands for submission.

But do Muslims actually care about pork? Islam is emphatically NOT a talismanic religion. Their creed is very simple: there is only god, and Muhammad is his messenger. Nothing else has any spiritual meaning. For instances, mosques are not “sacred ground” in Islam. The Wahhabists have actually gone around Saudi Arabia destroying all the old mosques because people were thinking of these places themselves as holy.

Pigs blood or pigs presence has no spiritual power. It is just another thing to eventually expunge from the world, like infidels, dogs, music, art, etcetera. The idea tha Muslims are somehow horrified of pigs is wrong. Pigs are just another religiously commanded enemy, which they are fully allowed to live amongst, and even pretend to like, just like they are allowed to pretend to like you.

As long as their ultimate goal is to do away with you and pigs, then to orthodox Muslims its all copacetic, as the hippies used to say. No problem. They wouldn’t eat pork for preference, but where it could in any way serve the goal of Islamic conquest, conquest takes priority.

We can hope that a large portion of Muslims are not orthodox: that they reject the orthodoxy’s ultimate objectives of conquest, slavery, murder, rape, looting, etcetera, but a lot of Muslims ARE orthodox, and the vast majority go along with orthodox appearances, since to be seen as deviant in Islam is to risk being murdered as an apostate.

Add that Muslims are supposed to lie in the service of Islamic conquest, and make you think they friendly when they are not, and it becomes pretty much impossible to trust any Muslims who do not overtly reject Islamic orthodoxy. You’d need to use brain scanning lie detection to separate the actually friendly from the pretend friendly, a technology we SHOULD be using to determine which Muslims to train as friendlies in Muslim countries like Afghanistan and Iraq.

@Alec Rawls: Good points.
I can recall a friend who worked one summer in a fine hotel in the UK.
Lots of wealthy Muslims stayed there.
Lots of alcohol served to their rooms.
Lots of things that were supposedly off their ”halal” menu.
In Uday and Kusay’s homes lots of alcohol was found.
Even Libya’s Gaddafi had American whiskey in this home.
Seems those high walled compounds hide a multitude of hypocrisies.

And
@Tom Kovach:
Thanks.
I seem to recall a similar rumor the Israeli’s started – that they had put bags of pig’s blood in the ceilings of their public buses.
The numbers of homicide bombers blowing up on Israeli buses did seem to drop off after that word went out…..might have been a coincidence though.
Israel never actually put pig’s blood on buses.

I should be more specific. It is not all Muslims who have the ultimate objective of exterminating infidels, pigs, dogs, etcetera, only orthodox Muslims.

We can hope that a large portion of Muslims are not orthodox: that they reject the orthodoxy’s ultimate objectives of conquest, slavery, murder, rape, looting, old men having sex with 9 year old girls, etcetera, but a lot of Muslims ARE orthodox, and the vast majority go along with orthodox appearances, since to be seen as deviant in Islam is to risk being murdered as an apostate.

Add that Muslims are supposed to lie in the service of Islamic conquest, making you think they friendly when they are not, and it becomes pretty much impossible to trust any Muslims who do not overtly reject Islamic orthodoxy. You’d need to use brain scanning lie detection to separate the actually friendly from the pretend friendly, a technology we should be using to determine which Muslims to train as friendlies in Muslim countries like Afghanistan and Iraq.

It’s not a jury. Stop using that word to describe the group. Juries arrive at conclusions only unanimously. This group’s decisions are made simply through a majority vote. Using the word “jury” to describe it is to give it an air of legitimacy that is unwarranted.

Actually, a jury must only be unanimous if the case involves the death sentence.

I was once the foreman of a jury.

This petition shows comments from a number of 9/11 family members and others, about the Flight 93 memorial: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/honorflight93/signatures/page/198
Here is a view of the plane crashing into the Islamic star:
http://s528.photobucket.com/albums/dd329/agent8698/Crescent%20of%20Embrace/?action=view&current=Shanksvillesmall.jpg