Makkah should become core to measure time zones: scholars

Doha, 2008 Apr 21, 2008, IQNA/Gulf Times

Speakers at a Doha conference on Makkah'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 Makkah 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 Makkah 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 gathering also urged to organise conferences to promote the idea of “Makkah as the centre of the world's land” and distribution of CDs to support it.

The conference was organised to introduce Saat Makkah (the watch of Makkah). The inventor of the clock, Yasin a-Shouk, said it runs anti-clockwise in the direction of Tawaf, the rotation around Kaaba.

The Switzerland-based award-winning inventor of Palestinian origin said that his invention met a lot of opposition and it took him four years to win the patent.

The moderator of the event, Rabaa Hamo, who is also the wife of the watch's inventor, said “the West imposed on us the invisible Greenwich line” as the world's reference time.

She hoped that an Islamic country would adopt the project to strengthen the belief that Makkah was the core of the world, not theoretically but practically.

Islamic scholar, Zaghloul al-Najjar, said that the West did not like the scientific proofs that “Makkah was located in the centre of our planet, but nevertheless we will go on our research to establish it as a truth”.

Other speakers talked about the privileges of Makkah quoting verses from the Holy Quran and the sayings of Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.a.).