Surprise: “Islamic Scholars” Say Mecca Is At Zero Longitude

22 Apr, 2008 by John Hawkins

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So, if any Canadian bloggers point out that there’s even less science behind this than there is behind manmade global warming, will they be brought up on hate crime charges?

SPEAKERS at a Doha conference on Mecca’s importance said that the holy city, not Greenwich, should become the reference point for world time, reigniting an old controversy that started some four decades ago.

A group of Islamic scholars presented on Saturday “scientific evidence” to prove that Mecca was the core of that the zero longitude passes through the holy city and not through Greenwich in the UK.

Greenwich in England has been the home of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) since 1884. GMT is sometimes called Greenwich Meridian Time because it is measured from the Greenwich Meridian Line at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Greenwich is the place from where all time zones are measured.

In a clear support for the call, Islamic scholar Yousuf al-Qaradawi said Islam, “unlike other religions, never contradicted science”.

The participants recommended the unification of the time in the Arab world to the time in Mecca instead of Greenwich. They also called the Arab governments to abandon the new world maps “because they are forged to serve Western interests.”

They also demanded that buildings in the Arab world be directed towards Qibla.

The very fact that these idiots weren’t laughed out of the room shows you why the term “Islamic scholars” has been an oxymoron for several hundred years now — and that’s actually sad. At one point in time, Middle Eastern Muslims were on the cutting edge of science. But, today? Their societies are so stagnant and backwards that they’re trying to re-fight battles that were settled everywhere else in the world more than 120 years ago.