BBC NEWS | Middle East | Muslim call to adopt Mecca time — So what is stopping any group from doing whatever they want? Just do it and see what happens.

Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth. Mecca is the direction all Muslims face when they perform their daily prayers.

The call was issued at a conference held in the Gulf state of Qatar under the title: Mecca, the Centre of the Earth, Theory and Practice. One geologist argued that unlike other longitudes, Meccas was in perfect alignment to magnetic north.

He said the English had imposed GMT on the rest of the world by force when Britain was a big colonial power, and it was about time that changed.

A prominent cleric, Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawy, said modern science had at last provided evidence that Mecca was the true centre of the Earth; proof, he said, of the greatness of the Muslim “qibla” – the Arabic word for the direction Muslims turn to when they pray.


Says Mecca is the True Center of the Earth

Found by Neil Jordan.




  1. The Monster's Lawyer says:

    In the near future all time will be totally accurate. All time devices will be synchronized to a set of satellites every parsec. Time estimates will be hard to calculate but the improvements in the watches or on-body time devices will do that for you. This of course will also provide big brother with abilities to track everyone.

  2. JimD says:

    Gee, I thought the center of the Earth’s land mass was at the Pyramid at Giza in Egypt !!! That should really annoy the Muslims to know that the Ancient Egyptians located the Center way before Muhammed even emerged from the Womb !!! So, NO CIGAR for the Muslim Clerics who want to re-write history and all the maps !!!

    LINK:
    http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showflat.php?Number=655902

  3. OhForTheLoveOf says:

    #2 – So what time is it?

    Flava Flav knows.

  4. Thinker says:

    So this is what it looks like when you’re full of yourself. 🙂 Nice picture!

  5. bobbo says:

    Well, this is real simple.

    200 years ago, if you wanted to be able to navigate a boat, you used GMT.

    Fairly soon it seems, if you want to put gas in your car, it will be Mecca Time.

    And in 50 years when the gas is gone, if you want cheap plastic crap, you will step your watch to Beijing.

    Time is man made and relative, subject to politics. As long as we can measure it, it always will be.

  6. pat says:

    “Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT”

    So we will have to set our clocks back 1,400 years?

  7. MikeN says:

    This is a good idea. GMT is really just centered on a spot in Greenwich, when it should have been Paris to begin with. Switching to Mecca is a reasonable accommodation.

  8. B. Dog says:

    I don’t care if they use sundials. I don’t care if they don’t let non-muslims in Mecca. I don’t care if somebody nukes the place. I just don’t care.

  9. gquaglia says:

    The British created the GMT. How much do you want to bet they are the first western country to acquiesce and have bi-temporal clocks just to appease these morons.

  10. OhForTheLoveOf says:

    #37 – But if it were Paris, instead of saying Three O’Clock, after 9/11 we would have had to say Freedom O’Clock.

  11. Kikineko says:

    I’m pretty sure that standard time was invented by Sir Sandford Flemming, a Canadian. Sure Canada was under British rule then, but still. The prime meridian goes where it is, not where people want it to be.

  12. chuck says:

    “The prime meridian goes where it is, not where people want it to be.”

    Nonsense – it goes through Greenwich because that’s were the people (the English people) wanted it to go. At the time England pretty much ruled the world.

    #42 got it right – using 15 degree increments for time zones, which came much, much later than when Greenwich was designated as 0 degrees latitude.

    The problem with using Mecca is that it’s at 40 degrees (actually 39 degrees 46 seconds). If it was at 45 degrees then the Muslims could simply offset the world time by 3 hours. Instead they want it offset by 2 hours and 43 minutes).

    They can choose to set their watch any way the want. But if they want to set my watch, they’ll have to pull it from my cold dead wrist.

  13. pat says:

    #43 -“They can choose to set their watch any way the want.”

    Don’t they still use sun dials and lunar calendars?

  14. nitroneo says:

    buh, hah, hah, hah, hah…

    idiots!

  15. Brian S says:

    In perfect alignment with a point that tends to roam, and has even radically changed places (opposite side of the planet scale of radically) over the Earth’s history? Sounds like someone’s reaching…

  16. PeterR says:

    #31: All time devices will be synchronized to a set of satellites every parsec.

    The parsec is a measurement of distance, not time (19,176,075,967,324.937 miles, approximately).

  17. zorkor says:

    this is just the beginning. soon the west will follow most of the Muslim laws. hell even there are talks about bringing the shariah in Britain and amputating the hands of thiefs in France. this is just the beginning. Islam will prevail as Islam is the truth. truth cannot be stopped.

  18. RBG says:

    48 Peter R. Not bad. Your approximation got it to 11.265408 meters (approximately).

    RBG

  19. Uncle Ben says:

    gquaglia How much do you want to bet they are the first western country to acquiesce and have bi-temporal clocks just to appease these morons.

    That would only ever happen if the EU (or American President) told us to….

  20. RBG says:

    13 Ah_Yea. There were great Muslim scientists even when your relatives were still living in a cave.

    39 B.Dog. You stole that from the guy driving the airliner into the World Trade Center, didn’t you?

    RBG

  21. PeterR says:

    #50: Peter R. Not bad. Your approximation got it to 11.265408 meters (approximately).

    Well I did say it was approximate!

  22. Jopa says:

    #52

    Hello moron!

    The west is a much more ancient civilization then Islam. There were science, academy, philosophy and almost any kind of science in the western world thousands of years before your religion was invented by muhamad.

    So basically, the west was flourishing (in any sense) when you were still sucking on camels c*ck IN A CAVE.

    I wish that somebody will just nuke mecca so we can move on.

    Next!

  23. Jopa says:

    #52

    Hello moron!

    The west is a much more ancient civilization then Islam. There were science, academy, philosophy and almost any kind of science in the western world thousands of years before your religion was invented by muhamad… Greece, Rome, etc.

    So basically, the west was flourishing (in any sense) when you were still sucking on camels c*ck IN A CAVE.

    I wish that somebody will just nuke mecca so we can move on.

    Next!

  24. crimsonfenix says:

    Guys, guys, there’s an easy solution to this. Once the Muslims find out the world is actually centered around Paris Hilton, they will quickly pass the buck. Probably to N Korea.

  25. crimsonfenix says:

    BTW, I keep my Swatch set to FSM time.

  26. gquaglia says:

    I wish that somebody will just nuke mecca so we can move on.

    Include the Vatican and you’ve got a deal! The sooner the world move on and stops believing in silly religions, the better off we will all be.

  27. mike cannali says:

    some day it will make it easier to target the missles

  28. BubbaRay says:

    #43, Chuck, “The problem with using Mecca is that it’s at 40 degrees (actually 39 degrees 46 seconds).

    I’ll assume you meant longitude, not latitude, and 39 degrees 46 minutes, not seconds, which is darned close.

    #49, RBG, “If it’s having a reference city with natural 0 degrees magnetic declination…”

    I’ll assume you meant magnetic deviation, not declination.

    All that said, at Mecca, magnetic deviation is not 0 degrees. That’s pure BS. It’s 2.4 degrees East. And it changes with time.

    Also, regardless of longitude, there is no location on Earth whose longitude is aligned with Polaris — Polaris’ offset from true Earth axis north is currently about 0.8 degrees. This also changes with time due to Earth’s nutation (period about 24,500 years).

    Muslim scientists, my elbow! Maybe they’d have better luck with a solar calendar (like real scientists) instead of a lunar calendar.

  29. bobbo says:

    60–Jag==thanks. Not “that” funny, but still a smile.

    61–Bubba. Not funny at all, but still a smile.

    How does THAT work?


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