A conference was recently held in Qatar, entitled: "Mecca, the Centre of the Earth, Theory and Practice." The meeting was attended by scholars and scientists, though there was remarkably little science on show. The scholars suggested that Mecca was the real "centre" of the earth.

Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawy, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, claimed that "modern science" had "evidence" to show Mecca was the center of the earth.

Another speaker, a geologist, claimed that the English had imposed Greenwich Mean Time upon the world, and it was time that the situation changed. He also claimed that the longitude of Mecca placed it in perfect alignment to magnetic north.

The geologist obviously does not understand what current notions of longitude represent. Greenwich is the site of the "Greenwich meridian", a line that is used in maps to indicate 0 degrees of longitude. It also represents the geographical point from which all other time zones are measured.

Magnetic north, on the other hand, is not a fixed point. It is constantly moving. In May 2001, data showed the North Magnetic Pole is currently moving northwest at 25 miles per year. In 2001, the North Magnetic Pole was located at Latitude 81 degrees and 3 minutes North, Longitude 110 degrees and 8 minutes West.

What is shameful is that the claims of these Islamic experts have to be challenged, broken down and refuted. There will be many Muslims around the world who will accept the claims as fact, and sadly these will not be caring about what science states.

Already there are websites and YouTube videos which appear desperate to prove Islamic traditions that Mohammed split the moon in half.

Lines Of Longitude

According to Diogenes Laertios, the philosopher Pythagoras (c 580 - c 500 BC) believed the earth was spherical. His belief derived not from any evidence but from subjective reason - for him the sphere was a perfect form.

The philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) argued that the earth was round. Previous philosophers such as Thales (624 BC - c 546 BC) asserted the earth was flat, while Anaximander (c 610 BC - c 546 BC) claimed the earth was a stone cylinder. Aristotle's proof came from the shadow of the earth on the surface of the moon during a lunar eclipse. The earth's shadow is always circular and never elliptical, as may happen if the earth were a flat disc, indicating that our planet is spherical.

In the Natural History of Pliny the Elder (who died in the eruption of Vesuvius, 79 AD), the shape of the earth is described in Book 2, chapter 2, paragraph 2 thus: "That it has the form of a perfect globe we learn from the name which has been uniformly given to it, as well as from numerous natural arguments. For not only does a figure of this kind return everywhere into itself and sustain itself, also including itself, requiring no adjustments, not sensible of either end or beginning in any of its parts, and is best fitted for that motion, with which, as will appear hereafter, it is continually turning round; but still more, because we perceive it, by the evidence of the sight, to be, in every part, convex and central, which could not be the case were it of any other figure."

Eratosthenes of Cyrene (276-194 BC) had measured the earth's circumference to be 250,000 stadia. If one takes the value of one stadium to be 157 metres, the result is surprisingly accurate. He also measured the tilt of the earth's axis and was the first person to devise a map system based upon latitude and longitude. The latitudes were named after certain locations, such as Alexandria, Syene and Meroe in the south of his "map", and the longitudes similarly, after the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar), Carthage, Rhodes and others.

The work of Eratosthenes was expanded by Hipparchus of Nicaea (190 - 120 BC). Using spherical geometry, Hipparchus placed existing locations onto a grid of latitude and longitude. Hipparchus also calculated the distance of the moon from the earth as being between 59 and 67 earth radii, when the actual figure is 60 earth radii).

Strabo (c 64 BC to 24 AD) had a coherent concept of the world that survives in his Geography. A map based upon his writings can be found here. Shortly after 43 AD, Pomponius Mela wrote a short treatise on geography. His unique contribution was the mention of "Antichthones" a region of land in the southern hemisphere. He asserted that this could never be reached by man as the heat of the equatorial zone would be too hot.

Genuine Islamic Science

During the Dark Ages, learning in Europe went on the decline. The works of Greek philosophers and mathematicians were housed in obscure monasteries but only a narrow of selection of ancient texts was maintained. Only a few learned members of the church were allowed to have access to this limited library.

The rise of Muslim society saw many of these texts being actively analysed and tested. Under the rule of the Abbasid Caliphs (750 until 1258) Islam underwent what is widely called its "Golden Age". Mathematics, astronomy, alchemy, geodesy and zoology were refined and developed. Many of the names for stars still used by astronomers today (eg Algol, Deneb, Altair, Rigel etc) are the same Arabic names given to them during this period. The Caliph al-Ma'mun ibn Harun, who ruled from 813 to 833, set up an institution in Baghdad called the "House of Wisdom" (Bayt al-Hikma) specifically to improve upon the knowledge gained by the ancients. Al-Ma'mun also set up observatories.

Famous scholars at the House of Wisdom included the mathematician Al-Khwarizmi (c780 to 850 AD) and the three Banu Musa brothers (born around 800). Al-Khwarizmi studied astronomy and spherical trigonometry, and algebra. The word "algebra" comes from one of his books (kitab al-Jar), and the word "algorithm" comes from a Latinized corruption of his name.

The Banu Musa brothers similarly made contributions to mathematics and astronomy, with brothers Muhammad and Ahmad working out the length of the year as 365 days and six hours.

Abu Rayhan al-Biruni (973 to 1048) used trigonometric results developed by Abu'l-Wafa and Mansur to work out latitude and longitude to an accuracy far higher than that given by Ptolemy. Al-Biruni collaborated with Mansur on works of astronomy and mathematics. He measured the earth's radius at 6339.6 kilometers (3939.2 miles) a figure not reached in Europe until the 16th century.

Longitude and Greenwich Mean Time

Measuring latitude has always been easier to achieve in the northern hemisphere than measuring longitude. Polaris, the pole star, is easily found in the night sky. Draw an imaginary line linking the two stars at the front of the Big Dipper (Merak and Dubhe). Extend this line upwards, and the first star of any magnitude that appears near (slightly south of) this line is Polaris. The firmament of stars rotates around this star, no matter the time or season. The angular height of Polaris corresponds to the latitude of the observer. Various instruments were used by ancient Greeks, Arabs and Western Europeans to measure the height of this and other stars, from the astrolabe to the quadrant and sextant.

For the Vikings, whose navigation skills took them from Scandinavia to Spain and North Africa and westwards to Greenland (Vinland) and Newfoundland, the star Polaris was called "Veraldar Nagli", the "world spike".

The demise of the Abbasid Caliphate at the hands of the Mongols in 1258 saw the end of Islam's "Golden Age" of science. The Renaissance mainly happened in Europe because ancient texts which had been preserved in the Muslim world returned to their former homes. This process was spearheaded by individuals such as Frederick II (born 1194, died 1250), who set up the first University at Naples and who employed Muslim scholars at his Sicilian court. From the 12th century onwards, translations of Ptolemy's Almagest were being circulated in Europe.

After 1492 the notion of the earth being round was widely accepted in Europe, even though Columbus had failed to arrive in the Orient as expected. The 16th century saw an expansion of European exploration. There was still a problem for navigators.

For every 15 degrees of longitude, local time is offset by one hour. Thus if the time at 0 degrees is midday, at 15 degrees West the local time will be 11 am, and at 15 degrees East the time will be 1 pm. If a sailor could know the local time at a fixed point - such as 0 degrees longitude - and compare it to the local time no matter where he was, a simple comparison of the two time zones could give the exact longitude of his position. To achieve this, an accurate clock was necessary, a clock that could function accurately with the heaving of the sea.

In the 17th century, clocks that kept accurate time on land - generally using pendulum mechanisms - were thoroughly unsuitable for maritime use. King Charles II of England had founded Greenwich Observatory on a hill above the River Thames in 1675. The aim of the observatory was to provide accurate observations of the heavens, and thus to assemble charts of lunar positions in relation to the stars. A sailor could use these lunar charts to infer the local time at Greenwich, and would be able to gain a figure for longitude. This method, called the Lunar Distance Method, was only partially accurate, and the first "Nautical Almanac" did not appear until 1766.

In 1714 the British government passed an act of parliament in which £20,000 was offered as a reward. The winner would have to construct a timepiece so accurate that it would keep time to 2 minutes' error (a half degree of longitude). The winner would also have to prove the timepiece could sustain this performance on a trip to the West Indies.

The man who finally achieved this goal was John Harrison (1693 - 1776), a joiner who made clocks as a hobby. The story of his quest to win the prize is described in Dava Sobel's book Longitude and the TV movie of the same name. Sobel also described the efforts of Rupert Gould to restore Harrison's timepieces to working order.

Harrison solved the challenge. The snobbery of the astronomers on the board set up to judge the contest long prevented him from receiving the full recognition he deserved. Even a petition from the monarch, George III, was ignored by the board. Harrison's quest began in 1728 and finally ended in June 1773 when parliament had passed an act awarding Harrison £8,750 and effectively ending the "Longitude problem". Harrison had made five timepieces, but his fourth (H4, completed in 1759) and fifth (H5) were revolutionary, designed like large pocket watches.

When Captain James Cook's ship the Endeavour left Plymouth on August 12, 1768, bound for the South Seas, the captain took with him a replica of Harrison's H4 timepiece, manufactured by Larcum Kendall. The Endeavour was set to visit Tahiti, to observe a transit of Venus across the face of the sun on June 3, 1769.

Around the same time, a voyage by Captain Phillip Carteret in the South Seas between 1766 to 1769 demonstrated the problems of measuring longitude. The "Bounty" was a ship that was commissioned to transport breadfruit from Tahiti to the West Indies. The famous mutiny took place on April 28, 1789. When the mutineers finally left Tahiti in September 1789, Fletcher Christian knew of the existence of an island listed in Carteret's charts.

Finding this island, called Pitcairn, was made more difficult as Carteret had wrongly calculated the longitude by three degrees. It took weeks for the mutineers to locate the island. The cartographic error would also give the mutineers protection from those who would return them to British justice. The fate of the mutineers from the "Bounty" remained unknown to the outside world until 1808, when an American ship, Topaz, landed at Pitcairn.

Though the story is long and circuitous, the reasons why Greenwich finally became the site of the Meridian of zero degrees should now be self-evident. The scholars at the "Mecca, the Centre of the Earth, Theory and Practice." conference in Qatar may be well-versed in Koranic and Hadith facts. But they are not aware, it seems, of any scientific reasons why Mecca should represent the Meridian.

It takes little energy to speak a lie or to start a false rumour - it takes far more energy and intellectual effort to quell such a falsehood. And sadly, the scholars at Qatar have only promulgated a lie.

Revising Science

Science has gone through many phases, and at one stage Islam actively encouraged exploration and examination. Later forms of Islam have maintained the notion that Islam is a complete philosophy, that it cannot be improved upon. Therein, it sets itself up for stagnation. Islamic science has not been globally visible recently. There have been few devout Muslims who have become winners of the Nobel science laureate. This complacent belief that one is following a "perfect system" is hardly a launch-pad for discovery.

Islamists all too often are anti-educational, choosing only Koranic education and eschewing the secular. In Afghanistan, schools are burned and teachers are killed by the Taliban. Girls are denied work and education. Women are encouraged by Islamists to wrap themselves up like tents and then lie to the world that they are liberated and valued for their "individualism" rather than for their sexual promise.

These Islamists have forgotten their own history, when being a Muslim meant being part of a culture that was forward thinking, that was buzzing with the joy of learning. A society where science was redefining the boundaries of the known. Yet even as astronomers and mathematicians under the Abbasids refined the dimensions of the earth and the cosmos, the same minds also put their genius to work on practical and mundane matters such as stock-taking, inheritances, irrigation and agriculture. The Islamists of today dream of expansion, but in a mechanistic, uninspired fashion. They lack the imagination to dream about finding out the true essence of the world. They are slaves to their own dogma and expect the rest of us to become slaves to their prejudices, their literalism and their prudery.

Evolution, despite what Creationists may say, is based upon scientific fact. The Catholic church now fully accepts the first passages of Genesis as metaphorical, rather than literal. The church does not feel that its notion of a guiding and omnipresent deity is threatened by science. Those who seek to "refute" evolution generally do so by subterfuge, selective quotation and outright misrepresentation of scientific facts. Such methods hint of desperation, and I believe that the scholars at Qatar are similarly displaying a desperation that could be described as "millennial".

Creation science, faced with opposition, has another face, that of "Intelligent Design", that accepts some aspects of science, but maintains that only divine intervention allowed for natural selection. In Islam, there is currently a trend called "Ijaz al-Qur'an". This means "miraculous nature of the holy text". It attempts to find justifications from the Koran to show that modern science was already "known" by the author of the Koran.

Rashad Khalifa (1935 to 1990) was an Islamic scholar - regarded by some as a heretic - who began this trend. Khalifa argued that the number 19 (the number of years in a full Islamic lunar calendar cycle) had miraculous relevance in the Koran. Egyptian-born Khalifa was stabbed to death at a mosque in Tucson.

Those who claim that there are cracks in the surface of the moon are similarly trying to "justify" the mention in Sura 54: verse 1 that the "moon is split asunder". In the Hadiths of Imam Muslim the moon is said to have split in two during the prophet's lifetime.

Many scientists (particularly in Europe) regard Creationists as intellectual Luddites, smashing down the intricate machinery of humankind's knowledge. Yet in the Islamic world there is a Creationist movement, that seeks to undermine genuine scientific discovery. The chief proponent of Islamic Creationism is Harun Yahya. His real name is Adnan Oktar, a 52-year old Turk who lives in Istanbul. An art-school drop-out, his books and websites are visually dense and striking.

He blames science, and particularly evolutionary theory, for the world's ills. Last year, he said: "Communism, fascism, and Freemasons stand on the tenets of Darwinism, and the world power of capitalism stands on the same... Hitler and Mao were both Darwinists... We will not deceive ourselves that scientists have a monopoly on truth."

Harun Yahya's lavishly-illustrated 800-page book Atlas of Creation maintains that the Holocaust and even 9/11 were created by "Darwinists". It has been smuggled into French schools, where secularism is promoted and has prompted an investigation by the Council of Europe. Copies have recently been found placed in libraries in Scottish universities, with five discovered in Edinburgh and two at Glasgow university.

The centre of the world in maps has changed according to the worldview of those who made such charts. At one point, Alexandria was viewed as the centre of the world, then Rome, and in Medieval maps, such as the Mappa Mundi of 1290, Jerusalem became the centre of the world. In this context it is not hard to understand why some Muslim scholars may want to see Mecca becoming the centre of future world maps. But wishing something is not the same as having any grounds to impose it on others.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who spoke at the Qatar conference, may have another motive for wanting to see maps and globes altered. He was recently refused entry to Britain. Is there an element of revenge at work here, trying to wipe out Britain's importance in the science of geodesy by removing the Meridian from Greenwich? If Qaradawi has "evidence" to show that Mecca is the centre of the world, then he should present it for scrutiny.

Qaradawi is anti-science. He is not a Muslim who bristles with the desire to expand his horizons of knowledge. He is an elderly pedagogue, who has learned the Koran, the Hadiths and Islamic jurisprudence, and now can only spout "judgments" and "fatwas". He is against evolution to the extent of declaring Pokemon characters to be Satanic as they encourage evolution.

The scholars of Qatar are suffering from the same malaise as other religious figures. They appear to be afflicted with "millennial angst". When a culture is in crisis, people look for divine signs, even if these mean abandonment of logic and reason. When the Second World War brought army incursions into Melanesia, tribespeople witnessed the activities. When the soldiers had gone, there were "Cargo Cults" where tribespeople believed that a new leader (John Frum) would arrive and bring them wealth, such as that they had witnessed amongst the army members.

When the Industrial Revolution took many farm workers out of their rural homes and traumatically brought them into the cities to perform factory work, there were several messianic cults. One English "prophet" called Joanna Southcott (1750 - 1814) was widely revered. In her sixty-fourth year she claimed to be pregnant with Shiloh, the "New Messiah". Her pregnancy lasted longer than nine months and she died. The swelling in her stomach was a caused by dropsy, a heart condition. Some former followers such as John Wroe founded cults that became more extreme.

For Native Americans of the Plains in the time leading up to the last defeat at Wounded Knee, the demise of their cultural heritage was accompanied by the rise of the Sioux, Paiute and Arapaho "Ghost dancers". People who wore special shirts and partook in Ghost Dances thought themselves immune to bullets. Similar beliefs have been found among youth soldiers in Liberia during the savagery of civil war when their culture was turned upside down.

The scholars at Qatar, I believe, are not asserting the supremacy of Islam. They are exposing their cultural insecurities despite a front of bravado. Their calls for abolition of GMT may rouse the educationally impoverished and the intellectually challenged. They argue from a position of desperation, not strength, when they employ dishonesty to make their case. The problems of Islam and Islamism stem from inflexibility and an ossification of belief. It need not be that way.

During the time of the Abbasid Caliphate, Islam was forward-thinking, not looking backward. Some of the brilliant minds of that period also had a sense of fun. Al-Jahiz (776 - 868) wrote 200 books, and was an accomplished zoologist and animal ethologist. He is even credited with developing a pre-Darwinian evolutionary theory. He also wrote one treatise entitled: "The Art of Keeping One's Mouth Shut" and another entitled: "Against Civil Servants".

There is a principle of Islamic jurisprudence called "Al-hukm-u yadullu ma'a illatihi wujudan wa adaman". This translates as "The law is formulated in accordance with circumstances", meaning Islamic law changes with time and with situational needs. It is not monolithic and inflexible.

All too often on Islamic forums, people are asking what they are allowed to do and what is "haram" (forbidden) for them. Islamists have nothing to offer anyone outside of their mindset, as they are locked in a pattern of dogma that is stifling, anti-creative and anti-scientific. Muslim leaders who really want to inspire others should stop whining about their losses and engaging in the politics of envy and victimisation. Religion should inspire and uplift, and free the mind, not shackle it with tabus and rigid dogmas. When religious leaders have to lie to make a point, they insult basic principles of human decency.

In 1687, Isaac Newton wrote: "If I have seen further than anyone, it
is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." Newton had
borrowed this phrase from earlier sources. In the 12th century, John
of Salisbury had written in Metalogicon: "Bernard of Chartres used to
compare us to dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants... we see more
and further than our predecessors... because we are lifted up and
borne aloft on their gigantic stature." Yusuf al-Qaradawi may be a
renowned scholar of Islamic literature, but in real-world terms he has
crouched under the haunches of midgets.

Adrian Morgan is the Westminster Journal Current Affairs Editor

---

Bookmark with: