Flags with a Crescent Moon

About Crescent Moon

The crescent moon, usually paired with a star, became closely associated with Islam through the Ottoman Empire, which used a red flag with a white crescent and star from the late 18th century onward. After the empire’s collapse the symbol was inherited by Turkey and adopted by many Muslim-majority states whose modern identities were forged in the same period: Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Pakistan, Malaysia, the Maldives, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Comoros, and the Cocos Islands all carry a crescent. The crescent itself predates Islam — it appears on Sasanian and Byzantine coins — but its modern flag use is overwhelmingly tied to the Muslim world. Singapore is a notable exception: its crescent represents a young nation on the rise, and the five stars beside it stand for democracy, peace, progress, justice and equality, with no religious meaning intended.