Lady Liberty in NY statue originally Muslim meant for Suez Canal

(MENAFN- Arab News) WASHINGTON: Current debates over the resettlement of Syrian refugees have prompted repeated invocations of the words on the Statue of Liberty: 'Give me your tired your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.'
The lines written by poet Emma Lazarus in the late 1880s were inspired by the hardships endured by Jewish refugees who arrived in New York after fleeing eastern Europe's pogroms. They're made even more relevant to the present moment however when considering the origins of the Lady Liberty statue.
The first draft for what would become the nation's symbol of welcome to the 'huddled masses' was conceived by French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi not for the Statue of Liberty but for an entirely different project: a lighthouse that would stand at the entrance to the Suez Canal.
According to historian Michael B. Oren in his book 'Power Faith and Fantasy' Bartholdi would carve the likeness of an Egyptian peasant woman holding aloft a torch of freedom. The monument twice as high as the Sphinx would guard the waterway's entrance and perhaps double as a lighthouse. Its name would be Egypt (or Progress) Bringing Light to Asia.'
Thus as the Daily Beast's Michael Daly pointed out the nation's symbol of all-American freedom and charity was in fact originally conceived as an Egyptian and by default in those times a Muslim.
For the next two years Bartholdi worked on sketches and tried to persuade Isma'il Pasha the then-Khedive (Viceroy) of Egypt to finance his project. But the viceroy was bankrupt by 1871 and in no condition to support a monument as large as two sphinxes.