On Fri, 13 Jun 2003, Linguasoft wrote:


> Lastly, a question related to the SHIFT+8 key: It's presently ASTERISK
> (U+002A, but wouldn't it be more appropriate for Farsi context to use
> this position for the ARABIC FIVE POINTED STAR (U+066D) symbol, and move
> the ASTERISK somewhere else, e.g. to ALT+8? Strangely, the ARABIC FIVE
> POINTED STAR symbol has *six* points in Arial Unicode MS and *eight*
> points in Tahoma. How comes? :-)

Ok, let's start with a little bit of history: the whole reason there is a 
five-pointed Arabic star, is that some hardline Muslims belived that *any* 
six-pointed star resembles the Jewish *Star of David*, and so insisted on 
using a five-pointed one. This was not only them. Actually the same had 
happened with Jews and a much more frequent symbol, the *plus sign* 
itself. Some hardline Jews considered that a cross, and thus a symbol of 
Christianity. So, even these days, some of the Israeli school books are 
published with another addition symbol, one that looks like a normal plus 
sign with the bottom like ommitted, something like a "is perpendicular to" 
symobl:

     |
   --+--

In Iran, typographers almost always use the six-pointed star to, say,
separate unrelated paragraphs (where usually three is used). Thus,
fortunately because of the lack of such hardliners (or them being unaware
of this concept), we have the more standard six-pointed one in the typeset
books and on the layout.

An exhausted roozbeh
See the original posting on the PersianComputing 
forum

HERE