Old Glory in Shul, Church and Mosque

The Jewish Standard writes (Displaying-flags-in-sacred-spaces)incisively this week about the various ways the American flag have appeared in shuls in the USA:

"O say, can you see…" that flag up there on the bimah? And the Israeli one too? Never paid them much mind? Can’t even remember what your shul does, flag-wise?

You’re not alone. Although America’s Jewish and Christian sacred spaces often have flags on display, most people who talked flags with The Jewish Standard had never spent much time thinking about it, nor were they getting much direction from their national parent bodies...

Islam, however, forbids the display of the flag or any other object, including furniture, anywhere within the prayer space of a mosque, so that nothing distracts from prayer or can be misconstrued as an object of veneration, said Imam Saeed Qureshi, of the Darul Islah mosque in Teaneck. The Stars and Stripes does, after all, have stars, and there are people in the world who worship stars or trees or the moon and so on. "Muslims are very very strict of worshipping only Allah."