Whoever fights under a "Flag of Blindness"...and gets killed fighting, dies the death of Jahiliyyah. -Prophet Muhammad (SAAW)

When the Israelis got out of South Lebanon back in 2000, the people in the Lebanese neighborhood of a certain Michigan city danced in the streets. Many of them, were waving Lebanese flags. (Late in the following year, these same people hauled down the Lebanese colors and started displaying Old Glory in their stores as a good luck charm, but that's another story.) Would these people, sincere Muslims for the most part, have touched the Cedar Flag if they knew what it represents?

The main portion is the white central band with the cedar tree. Its origin was the banner carried by Maronite Christians as early as the 18th Century. It refers to the verse in the bible, "The Righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon" (Psalms 92:12).

In its original form, red and blue verticals in the form of the tricolor replaced the two red horizontal stripes of the flag, so it looked like a French flag with the tree in the white center.

It is ironic that people were celebrating an "Islamic triumph" with a "crusader" flag.