Why Are Some Muslims Calling to Replace GMT with Mecca Time?

[rug]

Pseudoscience and paranoia—on both sides—amid controversy over the supremacy of Greenwich Mean Time


The world's largest clock tower

November 4, 2011
By Salman Hameed

This summer, the world’s largest clock began its first official duty: marking time during Ramadan in Mecca—Islam’s holiest city. This colossal clock bears a striking resemblance to Big Ben, and the tower that hosts it (courtesy of the Canadian-based Fairmont hotel operation) is six times taller than the British landmark, making it the second tallest building in the world, visible for 16 miles.

All well and good. One can marvel at human ingenuity and move on. However, what makes this case interesting is the fact that after the inauguration of the clock, there were calls from many Muslims to replace Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)—the world standard for 125 years—with Mecca Time. Some have argued that GMT is the remnant of a colonial heritage, and it is time to turn over a new page.

Surely, there is nothing special about where the Greenwich Observatory is located. The reason that the meridian is zero at Greenwich is because the British figured out how to calculate longitude at sea first, so they got to make a part of England the main reference point. Names associated with science are often, if not always, symptomatic of political power of the time. This is why many of the elements discovered in the 20th century—like berkelium, americium, and californium—have American names (though sometimes there were competing claims from Soviet laboratories also). Similarly, because Arab astronomy was dominant in the late medieval period, and Arabic atlases played a key role in the development of modern astronomy, more than half of the brightest stars in the sky have Arabic names. But for some Muslims today, that’s not enough.

Even if we concede the colonial legacy of GMT, what would justify Mecca to be the replacement reference point for the entire world?

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/culture/3799/why_are_some_muslims_calling_to_replace_gmt_with_mecca_time_/

Well, crap. Just when the BBC eliminated BC and AD.

[MADem]

1. Too damn bad. The Brits got there first. They call ALGEBRA (an Arabic word)

algebra, and ADMIRALS (another Arabic word) Admirals because the Arabs got there first.

Shit, get over it.

[izquierdista]

7. Arabs gave up being first when they listened to al-Ghazali

Interesting perspective from Neil deGrasse Tyson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41u-vLXd2D8

Interesting what a millennium of religion can (NOT) do.

[MarkCharles]

2. Some Christians want to control women's wombs, I don't care who controls my clocks

as long as it's about 5-7 AM when the sun comes up and 4-9 pm when the sun goes down.

What worries me more is what happens to women's wombs when Christians control them.

[rug]

5. How the hell many do you have?

Oh, you said clocks.

:yoiks:

[MarkCharles]

6. Wombs, I have NOT ONE! I want to control no one's, but fantasies come to

me,as to every other male gendered species.

Unless they are gay, which presents other ideas, do gay people want to control the clocks of straight people?

I'm just making bad jokes.............sorry.

[Iggo]

16. Took me a second...

:rofl:

[ZombieHorde]

3. GMT should be changed to wherever Gary Gygax is buried.

A great compromise would be to create a massive tomb for Gary Gygax right in the middle of Mecca.

[rug]

4. He's everywhere.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=25074706

[Rabblevox]

8. Who. The fuck. Cares???

I don't give a rat-roasting shit about the planet's chronological "0-Point".

Obviously, we need one, and for the civilized world, that has been Greenwich for many hundreds of years. No special reason, except the English codified it first.

If others want to call the zero-point in Mecca or Ramahllah, more power to them, and good luck with it. Miss science, computers, and air-travel much?

[MADem]

9. Indeed. That calendar of theirs isn't the bees knees in Fresno or elsewhere, either.

Hey, everything's up to date--it's 1432 in that end of the world!

[Rabblevox]

10. Lay off Fresno! (where I grew up) They've advanced to at least 1850 by now!

Kidding about laying of Fresno. We used to say Fresno is "late, out of date, and on the concert circuit, pure second-rate"

[cleanhippie]

15. +1

[Azooz]

11. the five daily prayers

Central, Eastern Mountain time zones exist because it is more convenient than GMT+ 7,8,9

It used more by TV stations than religious events as it is easier to remember

Long live GMT, especially in Greenwich.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. Ironically, the British government is proposing giving up GMT for Greenwich

and moving to Central European time. But it seems the Scottish government will veto this:

THE Scottish Government is blocking a bid by Westminster to put the UK’s clocks forward by an hour all year round.

The UK government is considering a three-year experiment to give the country an extra hour of daylight in the evenings.

However, it will only go ahead with the trial with the support of devolved administrations – and the SNP has voiced its opposition to the move, saying it sees “no case for a change to existing arrangements”.

The trial would see the UK move in line with the time in most of the rest of Europe – with British Summer Time plus one hour in summer and GMT plus one hour in winter, effectively meaning the clocks would go forward by one hour all year round.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/clock_change_blocked_in_time_bandits_row_1_1937262

[Jim__]

12. The hardest bias to see is our own.

That's not an argument for changing GMT. I just found this paragraph to be interesting:

The emotional appeal of such ideas, and the backing of some Muslim scientists, makes it very hard to challenge them. Such a challenge can only come from within the Muslim world, as any other approach will directly feed into the resurgent anti-Western narrative, which unfortunately the Western media often only reinforces. For example, the Daily Telegraph ended its story on the calls to adopt Mecca Time and the geological uniqueness of Mecca with the following disclaimer: “Western scientists have challenged such assertions, noting that the Magnetic North Pole is in actual fact on a line of longitude that passes through Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Antarctica.” The problem here is the qualifier, “Western” before scientists. Virtually all respectable scientists, Western or non-Western, would agree with the above statement, including many Muslim scientists. But by adding “Western” before “scientists,” the sentence creates an impression of a clash between Muslims—clinging to pseudoscientific ideas—and the rational West.

[trotsky]

13. Not to mention the enablement of this nonsense by po-mo'ers...

and others who would insist that every viewpoint is equally arbitrary and equally valid.

[dmallind]

17. Why? Because they want to gain mild reflected importance of course.

Should they get their wish? Doesn't make a damn difference to me whether I am GMT -6 or Mecca -9 or even Mumbai -11.5, but it's a whole lot of effort to go to to please one group while presumably pissing off another, so why bother? Would we take a directly analogous idea from Islamophobes to change the world "algebra" to "variable symbol math" seriously enough to consider that? Then why this one?