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roots remained strong, even to having the symbol of the virgin moon goddess Diana on its flag. When the Turkish armies took over, they also adopted the city's flag. As the Ottoman Empire gradually became the predominant empire of the Islamic world and the guardian of Mecca, its secular flag too became inextricably linked with Islam - even though the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem continues to this day to use the crescent moon and rayed star on his own church flag.

The star of the star and crescent is most commonly portrayed with five points, which some have interpreted to represent the five pillars of Islam. However, the five-point usage is not universal even among Islamic countries: and the star on the flag of Malaysia actually looks more like a small rayed sun. Ironically, the five-pointed star has a much stronger Christian association with the Virgin Mary and also with the human balance of the perfect Christian knight. In this latter association, it can be found on Sir Gawain's shield in the Old English story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and may perhaps also be linked with the five-pointed stars of the United States flag.

The simplest association is that of religious timekeeping. The Qur'an explicitly bans the intercalary month used by the previous version of the calendar in order to reconcile lunar cycles with the solar year; and thus releases the calendar from seasonal association (9:36). The intent is to de-couple the religious calendar from worship associated with the agricultural cycle. Instead, the Islamic world uses a lunar calendar whose months begin with the first sighting of the new moon: a thin crescent near the western horizon which would frequently be accompanied by Venus, the evening star. This first sighting is especially important to determining exactly when the month of fasting (Ramadan) and the month of pilgrimage (Dhu al-Hijjah) begin.

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