The Statue of Liberty Is an Arab

This is what passes for irony at the New York Times:

As Donald J. Trump speaks of building walls and barring Muslims from entering the U.S., it’s interesting to note that the supreme symbol of American immigration was first conceived to be Arab. 

The Statue of Liberty — depicting a Roman goddess — began as a robed woman representing Egypt, scholars say.      

The design, by the French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, was based on one for a lighthouse he proposed in 1869, to be built at the mouth of the Suez Canal and called “Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia.” 

The lighthouse was to be in the form of a woman standing with a torch in her hand. Bartholdi’s sketches were inspired by the Pharos lighthouse at Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. 

But the canal’s construction sent Egypt into debt. 

So the khedive, or viceroy, of Egypt didn’t have the money to make the Frenchman’s dream a reality. 

Bartholdi reimagined his design, and his masterpiece in New York was completed in 1886.

Tell me what that has to do with the problem of resurgent jihad and we'll both know.