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"Among His Signs are the Night and the Day and the Sun and Moon. Prostrate yourselves not to the Sun and the Moon but prostrate to Allah, Who created them, if it is Him ye wish to serve." (Qur'an 41:37)

Faced with specific Qur'anic injunctions against idolatry, Islam has always had a challenging time with imagery bearing religious overtones. While the modern star and crescent is technically a secular image, its use by the Ottoman Empire and several non-profit organisations operating in Islamic countries has had the effect of making this symbol inseparable from Islam itself.

Modern mosques have reinforced the association by using the crescent moon to top their domes: although, interestingly, not in the Arabian Peninsula itself.

Part of the problem is that Islam has no equivalent to Christianity's division of church and state. Thus, it became very easy for symbols borrowed in the name of secular power to acquire religious overtones.

While the moon is referenced frequently throughout the Qur'an, even having an apocalyptic sura named for it (54: Al-Qamar), it is always as one of the works of Allah along with the sun, the day, and the night; and not in itself the thing to be worshipped. The repeated reminders are aimed at worshippers of the pre-Islamic Arabian gods and goddesses, which are believed to have numbered the moon among them, sometimes in several different guises. It is worth noting that the word for "moon" used in the Qur'an is different from that used for moon-as-goddess (al-Lat/Q're) or moon-as-god (the Sumerian loan-god Hubal), another way of keeping the creation of Allah from itself becoming an object of worship.

However, the indigenous peoples of much of the modern-day Islamic world, and indeed most of the world generally, certainly did include both moon and the evening star in their worship. Coins from the great empires of ancient Ethiopia and South Arabia (Yemen) frequently show the star and crescent. Early Islamic coins, in sharp contrast, contain no visual symbols whatsoever: only Arabic writing.

The strong association between Islamic power and the symbol of the crescent moon began with its use by the Sassanian Empire of Persia (Iran), adopted by later caliphates as a pre-existing secular symbol after it had been absorbed by Islam in 651. However, its modern association with Islam began with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. Even though Constantinople was at this time the heart of a Christian

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