Google Doodle Controversy: An Islamic Crescent Moon Hidden In Vet Doodle?

Today’s Google Doodle either celebrates Veterans Day or grossly offends America – it depends on who you ask.

This morning, Twitter and Facebook were humming with comments surrounding the appearance of a crescent shape peeking out from behind the American flag. Part of the logo’s “e,” the so-called crescent moon is one half of the primary symbol of the Islamic faith, the crescent moon and star. With tweets like, “Happy Veterans Day, Islam” setting off a series of anti-Islamic tirades.

These accusations were met with an equal amount of eye-rolling, but in a society that tends to view the Islamic faith as an encroaching monster of Hollywood proportions here to cancel Christmas and steal our roast beast, nothing Muslim-related goes away without a hailstorm or seven. William Browning of Yahoo’s Associated Content scolded Google for the oversight, calling it distasteful and instigating. “No wonder Islamic extremists hate us,” he said.

(More on Techland: New Muslim Superhero Comic Planned For November)

Google has yet to comment on the doodle and whether it’s an actual off-color prank played by a bored developer or just the bottom of an “e” – and another example of the Muslimphobia surging through the American conscious.

More on Techland:

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http://www.msu.edu/~moranmi1 Mike Moran

Muslimphobia, or people just trying to be funny. Nothing more than that.
cydonos

It’s the bottom of the e. Get on with your lives.
captainnoble

Oh noes! Teh Google has been taken over by the A-rabs! Grab your guns and run for the hills! We’ll make our last stand there! Wolverines!
chimparzan

People on the net are always blowing everything out of porportion or making things like this into something crazy. A good example is yahoo comments section. If they wrote and article titled “Fruit” and the entire article consisted of “I like peaches” you would only have to scroll six comments down to find a political or religious debate going on.
http://theTIMEmachine.deviantART.com RadioActivist

I signed into facebook this morning to find a never ending line of racism and hate.
In the US people are muslimphobic because of the bottom of an E, here in the UK people are going crazy (and surprisingly political) about a small group of extremists who set up an anti-remembrance display by burning a giant model poppy (the symbol for remembrance day here) and breaking the national 2 minute silence using megaphones shouting things such “british soldiers burn in hell”.

And people are freaking out over an E? Some people need to get over themselves.
http://ramble1.wordpress.com mattjfox

Okay if you look at the Soviet hammer and sickle, this does actually look alot like that. The whole way the that this red horn kind of sticks out from the flag is rediculous and has no feng shui. It looks like someone did something awkward… on purpose.

Do you know how many over paid editors Google has that pass their eyes over this? They knew all the angles of how this doodle could/would be interpreted.

Further this is not the first time Google has done something with particularly Russia in mind. They won’t commemorate any US war holidays until the last two years, which I don’t really care about, but they do commemorate the launch of Sputnik?

People were fearful Sputnik was going to drop a nuke on the US.

David Brin I think he name is… co founder of Google, was not suprisingly raised in the soviet union.

I think for a company of Googles size, they are acting like they started this thing in a garage in Silicon Valley. Grow up Google… you have arrived. Put your own personal agendas aside and deliver excellent search results, thats all we care about. Fuck your stupid doodles they bug me anyways. Even the John Lennon one.
22def

I swear if hey try to steal my roast beast again, I’m going to punch them right in the mouth.
kjfisher

I wish we could “like” other comments. (@captnoble)