WASHINGTON, 13 October 2007 — The Empire State Building in New York was lit up in green last night in honor of the Muslim holiday of Eid, the biggest festival in the Muslim calendar marking the end of Ramadan. An estimated seven million Muslims live in the United States.
“This is the first time that the Empire State Building will be illuminated for Eid, and the lighting will become an annual event,” the building’s management told reporters.
The Empire State Building was first lit up with colored lighting in 1976, when red, white and blue lights were used to mark the American Bicentennial. Since then, New York’s tallest building began celebrating Christmas, the Jewish festival of Hanukah and St. Patrick’s Day by changing the color scheme of its three tiers of night-time lights that light up the top of the iconic building like a crown that can be seen for kilometers around Midtown Manhattan.
The Empire State Building will be lit green through Sunday. Some US Muslims began celebrating Eid yesterday while others are sticking to a different lunar schedule and will begin celebrating today.
The move has instigated a predictable knee-jerk response from the right-wing blogoshpere, such as the anti-Muslim blog “Little Green Footballs” and others. Most of the right-wing outrage repeats the mantra that 9/11 was an attack by Muslims (as a broad category that includes 1.2 billion people) rather than by specific extremist ideologues.
“You’re honoring the very people who killed 3,000 of your citizens in cold blood and fire and then danced in the streets to celebrate,” said a blogger who writes under the blog title “Say Anything” from North Dakota, over 1,000 miles away from Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan.
Closer to home in New York City — where citizens actually witnessed and were affected by the 9/11 attacks — the move was met yesterday with the typical New Yorker’s sense of indifference; no outrage or protests were reported and even the website of the right-leaning New York Post seemed subdued to the move to honor the end of a month where Muslims are taught to empathize with the poor and hungry through the discipline of fasting and giving to charity.
In March this year, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, an Al-Qaeda member, revealed that the Empire State Building had been among the group’s targets in a wave of post-9/11 attacks. After the toppling of the World Trade Center, the Empire State Building returns to its position as the city’s tallest skyscraper.
Built in 1930 to be the tallest structure on earth, the Empire State Building was at the time considered to be the largest commercial venture and investment ever. The Art Deco skyscraper soars 102 stories and sits on the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street and is one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions.
The Empire State Building has been named by the American Society of Civil Engineers as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. An international icon, it has been visited by more than 117 million people, who come to marvel at the 80-mile view into New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts.
