Posted on 02/07/2017 9:05:48 AM PST by SeekAndFind
In times of such political turmoil in the United States, where thousands of citizens are against President Donald Trump's refugee travel ban and deem it targeting Muslims particularly, one intriguing trivia has surfaced about America's Statue of Liberty.
The Statue of Liberty -- America's symbol of freedom and acceptance of diversity -- could actually have been modelled on a Muslim woman, after all. This news is of significance considering Trump's executive order has banned people from at least seven Muslim-majority countries to enter into the United States, citing 'terrorism concerns.'
Reports state that the statue's designer, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, a French sculptor, was enamoured with Egyptian pyramids and monumental sculpture.
According to historian Edward Berenson, Bartholdi, in the 1860s, decided to build a monument to commemorate the opening of Egypt's Suez Canal.
"And that monument was going to be a woman in the southern opening of the canal holding up a torch over her head and that woman was dressed in Arab peasant garb," Berenson says. However, when the ruler of Egypt, Khedewi Ismail Pasha, went bankrupt, the structure was abandoned.
It wasn't until very long that the sculptor decided to make some alterations to his design, Brenson explains, "A couple of years earlier, Bartholdi and his friends decided they were going to give a gift to the United States that was going to celebrate the centennial of the American Revolution." It was then when the artists decided to reuse the sculptor and alter it to fit the American Revolution, PRI reported.
The result of that alteration was a woman, who was originally dressed in Arab garb transformed into a Greco-Roman goddess of liberty Libertas. The statue was a gift from the people of France to the United States and celebrated America's liberation, and served as a welcoming sight to immigrants arriving from different nations to the country.
Today, the current American government's anti-immigrant stance has alarmed many nations abroad, and has caused uproar within American cities where many call the move unconstitutional and against the country's ideologies.
RE: Was Betsy Ross a Muslim?
Don’t worry, They’ll find a way to make her one... Emma Lazarus too :)
Good lord!
Complete and total revisionist Bull.
Lets see...he originally had Arab woman in Arab garb.
Then her changed the garb, but according to this nonsense didn’t change the Arab woman?
Got it.
Anything they can fabricate to say that Islam had a long and friendly relationship from the beginning of America’s history, when there was really no relationship at all except for Thomas Jefferson making war upon them.
All propaganda, and fake news.
Islam is antithetical to democracy and anyone who tells you different is lying to you or is ignorant of its basic precepts.
Classical sculpture from Europe for oh, about a 1000 years!..............
Next she will be a transgender.
Let’s investigate this right after we finish the investigations on whether Cleopatra was black and Abraham Lincoln was gay.
How can any sane person speak of Islam and freedom, positively, in the same sentence?
Whether or not this is true is irrelevant. It is politically useful, so people will believe it or not based on what politically useful for them.
Sorry, I should have said how can any sane person speak of Islam and liberty, positively, in the same sentence?
I keep asking myself just how low and how stupid can this crap go...and I keep getting surprised.
ah geeze...not this crap again....
Rebuffing national security and cracking down on illegal immigration is not “anti-immigrant.”
Or gay.
Lie and lie and lie to fit the narrative. One statue was not repurposed into another. Design 1 falls thru for client X. Design 2 is commissioned for client Y. The two have nothing to do with each other other than that the artist was into big-assed statues (not to be confused with statues with generous sized asses).
The Statue of Liberty is modeled after the Roman goddess Libertas (surprise, surprise); not some peasant.
Next, there will be a Muslim sympathizer who says a Muslim woman was the model for Minnie Mouse.
Still think we should ban Muslims from getting too close to her... as a precaution. ;)
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