What do the star and crescent mean in Islam?
So many different opinions. The sighting of the new crescent moon is how the Prophet and his contemporaries, the earliest Muslims, established the beginning of the new month. This was especially important for determining the first day of the fasting month of Ramadan, or the month of pilgrimage. However, there is no religious or theological significance to the crescent and star, and they still have none as such. Some scholars believe that the crescent was introduced into Islamic symbolic consciousness as a continuation of pre-Islamic design motifs, and record its use in the minting of coins as early as the late 600s–that is, within the first century of the death of the Prophet–and was also used on pottery decorations. Because Christians erected a cross on the dome or highest point of their churches, and as Muslims co-habited with Christians and members of other faith traditions, the need arose to distinguish their mosques from churches and other houses of worship–especially where the
