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Mecca Time
Hammer Time! Mecca Time!
"Time's Up" for Greenwich Mean Time, according to a group of Islamic scientists.
A gathering of Muslim clerics and scientists in Qatar has called for GMT to be replaced by "Mecca Time", having "proved" that the holy Saudi city is the "centre of the world."
The BBC reports that the forum - "Mecca, the Centre of the Earth, Theory and Practice" - is dedicated to Islamist science. In an unconventional reading of scientific method, Islamic scientists believe that all truths are contained in the Muslim Holy Book, the Koran, and that it is the job of scientists to unearth them. Hence, "Islam has never contradicted science", as one delegate claimed, "unlike other religions."
Hence, one geologist determined that Mecca is the only site in the world that points to the "true geographic north", and thus should host the meridian. A prominent cleric said that this proves Mecca is the "true centre of the world" and proof "of the greatness of the Muslim "qibla" - the Arabic word for the direction Muslims turn to when they pray."
Islamic scholar, Zaghloul al-Najjar said the West did not like the scientific proofs that “Mecca was located in the centre of our planet, but nevertheless we will go on our research to establish it as a truth”.
There are political reasons for moving the time line, too. One delegate complained that the English forced London time on the world in the 1880s, when it was a colonial power. "The West imposed on us the invisible Greenwich line," he said.
Those days have ended and it is high time GMT went the same way, he argued.
Does April 1st fall late in the Muslim calendar?
More examples of Islamic "science" here, including a startling claim that US Astronaut Neil Armstrong was the first to notice that Mecca was the centre of the cosmos...
