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Dr. Daniel Griffith (“anything can point to Mecca, because the earth is round“) is still trying to convince the press that the Flight 93 crescent does not point to Mecca. In an email to the Park Service and the press this week, he tried to make it sound as if Alec Rawls is calculating the orientation of the crescent by using techniques that can be manipulated to achieve any desired result:
Based on Alec’s arguments, one could claim that the memorial is oriented toward the Vatican.
The Flight 93 crescent can indeed be seen as pointing to the Vatican, for the simple reason that the Vatican sits on the great circle line between the crash site and Mecca.
This is what Griffith represents as some concocted method for calculating the orientation of the crescent: the great circle method!
This “shortest distance” or “straight line” direction to Mecca (curving only in the over the horizon direction) is the relevant direction because this is the way that Muslims calculate the direction to Mecca. (There was a debate about it in the 1980’s and 90’s, largely settled by this nondescript looking analysis.)
Here is the great circle line from the Flight 93 crash-site to Mecca:
(Click-pic for larger image. Great circle calculator here.)
Here is the great circle line from the crash-site to the Vatican:
This calculator rounds to the nearest degree, so Mecca and the Vatican both are presented as lying on the great circle line that, from the crash site, proceeds 55° clockwise from north.
Of course a person who faces Mecca is also facing everything else that happens to lie in the direction of Mecca. When Griffith acknowledges that the crescent points to the Vatican, he is not a debunking of the Mecca-orientation of the Flight 93 crescent, but confirming it.
Reductio ad Hitlerum
Griffith pulled the same trick last July, telling reporter Kirk Swauger of the Johnstown Tribune Democrat that the crescent can be seen as pointing to a Nazi concentration camp if you want:
Griffith said Rawls suggested memorial organizers would be outraged if the crescent pointed to a Nazi concentration camp instead, the professor said it actually could be done.
Of course Rawls never suggested that anyone should care if the crescent pointed at a concentration camp. Is there a worldwide religion of facing Nazi concentration camps for prayer? Was Flight 93 hijacked by people who face Nazi concentration camps for prayer?
An unpublished report that Griffith wrote for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review in 2006 clarifies his concentration camp reference. It notes that there was a Nazi concentration camp (Drancy) located just outside of Paris, which as you can see on the maps above is also (like the Vatican) on the great circle line between the Flight 93 crash-site and Mecca. In his 2006 report, Griffith acknowledges that the crescent points to the Drancy camp, yet is still unwilling to acknowledge that it points to Mecca. Somehow, the crescent points to everything on the line to Mecca except Mecca.
When Griffith told Swauger that you can see the crescent as pointing to a Nazi concentration camp if you want, he was clearly trying to mislead Swauger into thinking that you can see the crescent as pointing wherever you want. This dishonest intention was made clear by another statement that Griffith made to Swauger (not reported by Swauger, but related by Swauger to Alec Rawls at the time). Griffith told Swauger that: “You can face anywhere to face Mecca.”
He is doing the same thing when he tells the Park Service now that the crescent can be seen as pointing to the Vatican, without being clear that this is because the Vatican sits on great circle line to Mecca.
Pecksniff
In his email, Griffith complains that Rawls has been trying to bully him into changing his analysis. Nobody is trying to bully Griffith into changing anything. We are trying to expose him as a fraud.
Griffith is practically in tears about being called a Pecksniff (a character from Martin Chuzzlewit “who lies and cants whether he is drunk or sober”). It is the perfect epithet. Look in the dictionary under Pecksniff and you will see Daniel Griffith’s picture.
Not that anyone should bother to read Griffith’s email, but if anyone wants to, it puts front and center another astounding example of Griffith’s free-form dishonesty.
Griffith quotes Rawls’s January 2006 report to the Memorial Project as saying that:
…the orientation to Mecca “take[s] a short cut over the North Pole … even though Mecca is south of Shanksville.”
From this supposed quote, Griffith goes on to construct an elaborate fantasy about how, since the great circle line between the crash-site and Mecca does not actually go over the North Pole, it was really Rawls, not he, who started this idea that you can face different directions to face Mecca.
But Rawls’s report to the Memorial Project did not say that a person facing the north pole from the crash site is facing Mecca. Rather, it includes an aside explaining why the shortest-distance line to Mecca “points in a northeasterly direction” (not due north), even though Mecca is south of Shanksville. The reason is because both are in the northern hemisphere. To illustrate, the report includes the simplest possible example: “The shortest distance between points on the opposite sides of the northern hemisphere will take a short cut over the North Pole.”
Griffith quotes only the second half of this sentence, omitting the part about connecting points “on the opposite sides of the northern hemisphere.” That allows him to pretend that the points referred to are the crash-site and Mecca. Of course Shanksville and Mecca are not on opposite sides of the hemisphere. Mecca is about 2/3rds of the way around the hemisphere from the crash-site.
Having Misrepresented Rawls as saying, not just that a person facing into the giant crescent is facing Mecca, but also that a person facing due north from the crash site is facing Mecca, Griffith then writes:
I fail to be convinced that only 2, rather than the infinity of possible, arcs are acceptable to Muslims.
Bwahahahaha! Griffith just finished saying how wrong it is to think that a person facing north from Shanksville is facing Mecca. Then he turns around and uses this face-north-to-face-Mecca claim (misattributed to Rawls) as justification for saying that a person facing any direction is facing Mecca. Just how much peck has this idiot been sniffing?
To join our blogbursts, email Cao (caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com) with your blog’s url.
Also, check out Skye’s interview with Bill Steiner, the man who discovered the Islamic influences on this memorial:
Actually, only the Mihrab, or Prayre Niche, points toward Mecca, not the entire mosque. and generally Muslims orient themselves to point east, toward Mecca when they pray. The entire Mosque does not have to point toward Mecca. (When on the Saudi peninsula, muslims will orient themselves directly toward Mecca, no matter where they are in the country. When further away, they face east, on the assumption that their prayers will travel around the globe toward Mecca. (for those who believe the world is round).
So, if the flight 93 Memorial was truly a “Mosque”, then the entire memorial would face east, and not across the pole toward Mecca.
By the way, early Christian churches had a similar orientation. In their case pointing east toward Jerusalem. So, perhaps the Flight 93 memorial is truly a Christian symbol, and pointing toward jerusalem, not Mecca, if you are looking for hidden meanings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosques
pecksniff. heh.
Philadelphia Steve,
Wikipedia is your source???
Oh Lord help us!
I’m afraid Philadelphia Steve is pulling your leg. Muslims do not face east for prayer, unless they happen to be due east of Mecca. Neither does the Wikipedia page cited say any such thing. Do a search for “east” on the page referenced and it does not come up.
It is true that for most of Islamic history, Muslims had no accurate way to determine the direction to Mecca, and came up with a variety of rules of thumb to compensate. Sometimes they would have mosques face down the road to Mecca. Sometimes they would align with the walls of the Kaaba. Sometimes they would point south, as Muhammad’s mosque in Medina roughly did. I have never come across any source that claimed that mosques ever faced east.
Here is a page from David King’s 1999 book on direction finding in Islam, showing some of these rules of thumb: http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z36/AlecRawls/MirhabOrientationDavidKing1999p4-1.jpg
Both churches and synagogues do sometimes face east. In Judaism this is to face Jerusalem. In Christianity I think it is to face the rising sun, symbolizing ressurection.
In any case, as the post describes, the issue is pretty well settled amongst Muslims, now that there are accurate ways to determine the direction to Mecca. Modern Muslims use the great circle direction to Mecca, and this is the direction that a person facing into the giant Flight 93 crescent will be facing (to within two degrees).
Steve,
There are plenty of other sites besides the easily edited by anyone Wikipedia. I would recommend staying away from CAIR sites and their ilk. However, the “ask an Imam” site (if it is still up) is insightful if only to see what these people are really saying to each other. Mind you that it is just about as nauseating as looking at any other hate site, but informative in a Sun Tsu sort of way (know your enemy and all). I would stay away from the easy to find jihadist web boards as they are havens for hackers trying to make zombie computers and monitored by US (and pretty much every other intelligence agency in the world) SIGINT to trace down the terrorists on them.
That said, there are plenty of non-governmental groups/blogs/watchdogs watching the jihadists and studying the aspects of Islam and its government as Islam is the only religion which also entails a full set of laws for governance. MEMRI offers translations of Arabic and Farsi TV and other media outlets for starters. Palestine Media Watch is another. These are just two of the dozens I know of.
You may also want to look up the cultural meaning of a Mihrab. They are not “Prayer Niches” in the Judaic-Christian sense of the word. The are places where a leader, particularly a war leader, stands. It is a completely different concept than any other religion. Just like “peace” to Westerners means something totally different to Muslim leaders.
The fact that this ‘memorial’ will have glass blocks for the victims, including the four hijackers, tells me all I need to know: This is a jihadi memorial. No about of wishy-washy circumlocution will change that, only a redesign will.
This is a jihadi memorial. No amount of politically correct doublespeak will make me think differently. Why are we letting this happen? Why is free speach only for a select few?
There’s a very simple solution to this. Drop all plans for a memorial, other than what is there now, and let it grow. Nothing they build can be more powerful than what has been placed there now, and if you don’t believe me, I suggest that the next time you’re in Pennsylvania, you visit Shanksville.