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The curious case of Google Islam

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November 12, 2010 15:02

Oh, Americans. Forever doing their best to dispel the myth that they are not, ahem, the brightest of the bunch, a fair few have been rather upset with Google this week. Why?

As you will probably know, the web giant like to change their logo to mark particular days or events - Sesame Street's anniversary, Halloween - and yesterday they decided to honour Veterans Day (what we call Armistice Day).

But the graphic they chose, clearly of an American flag against a brightly lit sky, confused browsers, because all but the tail end of the letter “E” was concealed. Meaning, the logo looked – scream – like a crescent.A crescent.

Only the symbol of Islam. On Veterans Day, no less. And to make matters worse, it sort of looked like a flag was burning.

One person tweeted: “"An American flag covering a partial showing Islamic crescent moon...good job GOOGLE.

“Way to do your part to further fan the flames of tension between the western world and the Islamic community. Lets see how you play dumb and spin this."

Another (Caps his own), wrote: “MY GOD TODAY’S GOOGLE LOGO HAS AN AMERICAN FLAG WITH A MUSLIM CRESCENT MOON!!!!”

Leaving aside the obvious point – would it really be so terrible if Google decided to honour Muslim victims of war? – I’d like to suggest that it’s not a crescent at all.

It’s clearly a Shofar, guys.

November 12, 2010 15:02

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