In Their Own Time

This has been getting a great deal of blog interest. However, I thought that rather than jump in immediately myself, it was worth pondering and seriously considering whether actually it “may or may not be true“. The BBC reports:

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…

…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, Mecca’s was in perfect alignment to magnetic north…

Are “Muslims scientists” merely scientists who are Muslims, or are they more akin to “Christian scientists“? Unfortunately, Beeb writer Magdi Abdelhadi doesn’t say. Presumably, though, non-Muslim scientists will now be welcomed in that city to do their fieldwork, to corroborate this remarkable, new finding?

Unlikely, to say the least. Religion Facts tells us:

…non-Muslims are strictly prohibited from entering Mecca and Medina. Roadblocks are stationed along roads leading to the city. The most famous incident of a non-Muslim visiting Mecca was the visit by the British explorer Sir Richard Burton in 1853. Burton disguised himself as an Afghani Muslim to visit…

Interestingly, non-Catholics are not banned from visiting the Vatican. In any event, evidently everyone else must simply take their “scientific” word for this discovery. But is it really about “the science”, given that same geologist had also informed us:

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…

Curiously, it was apparently “imperialist” for the most interested parties to arrive at an international agreement necessary for international navigation. But for members of a religious group to demand that agreement now be scuttled (no pun intended) and re-oriented to accommodate their religious demands? Unimperialist in the slightlest, undoubtedly.

For it is worth noting — because, again, the BBC doesn’t in this piece — that GMT and longitude are not about British imperialism per se. They have a bit more to do with the reality that Britain was the foregoing sea user of the 18th and 19th centuries (as Christians measure time), and its government had wanted to solve a navigation problem which heretofore hadn’t apparently particularly troubled anyone dwelling on the Arabian peninsula. According to the National Maritime Museum’s history of the imperialist Royal Observatory:

…A disaster at sea in 1707 killed over 2000 men and prompted greater calls for more reliable means of navigation. In 1714, Parliament established a panel of experts, the Board of Longitude, and offered a massive £20,000 reward (equivalent of about £2 million today) to anyone who could solve the problem of finding longitude at sea. It took nearly 60 years for the prize to be claimed. In the end it went not to a famous astronomer, scientist or mathematician, but to a little-known Yorkshire carpenter turned clockmaker, John Harrison…

Actually, the museum has there overstated the number killed. According to The Council of the Isles of Scilly Association Commemoration Group 2007, it was 1,450. And insofar as developing an agreement on GMT itself is concerned:

…The Greenwich Meridian was chosen to be the Prime Meridian of the World in 1884. Forty-one delegates from 25 nations met in Washington DC for the International Meridian Conference. By the end of the conference, Greenwich had won the prize of Longitude 0º by a vote of 22 in favour to 1 against (San Domingo), with two abstentions (France and Brazil)…

One of the main reasons for its choice, as the museum notes, was “at the time, 72% of the world’s commerce depended on sea-charts which used Greenwich as the Prime Meridian.” Another was that:

…the USA had already chosen Greenwich as the basis for its own national time-zone system.

Surprisingly, these Muslim “scientists” somehow overlooked that the accursed Americans were really the major manipulative force behind GMT. But not everyone overlooks obvious facts. The Independent’s Mary Dejevsky is probably also relieved to learn that it is all at least in part the fault of the Americans, for as she also helpfully informs us:

…Qatar shows is that it is quite possible to have prosperity, development and education while retaining principles that might be thought incompatible. New technology – computers, mobile phones, satellite communications – is ubiquious. But it can be harnessed as effectively to someone else’s priorities and worldview, as it can be to ours. To operate an iPod does not require a Western outlook. Your ringtone might be the Muslim call to prayer.

The view that women in a Muslim society necessarily enjoy fewer rights than we do may or may not be true…

With that latter telling insight, we see once again why we love the Independent: its writers never fail to seize a controversial subject firmly and intellectually wrestle it to the ground, unapologetically.

That said, given how we have gotten to where we are now technologically, in all likelihood it is more likely than not (not just, in this case, “may or may not”) that if it were not for the “Western outlook”, there would not today be computers, mobile phones, satellite communications, and iPods in existence for them to be “harnessed effectively” in present-day Qatar. Just like, because the Isles of Scilly do not lie off the coast of Arabia, there would not be GMT.