With the economy tanking, oil washing up on the beaches of New Jersey, troops leaving Iraq to the Taliban, Iran going nuclear, and Obama and Pelosi praising a plan to build a Mosque on America’s hallowed ground, you could be forgiven for missing a little news story out of Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
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Seems that it isn’t enough for the Saudi’s to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into building and supporting thousands of Mosques in the United States or forcing Sharia law into our courts, they now want to control time itself.
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As part of the King Abdul Aziz Endowment Project which is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into expanding and modernizing area around the Two Holy Mosques, in Mecca, a new $800 million dollar clock is being unveiled. The purpose? To replace Greenwich Mean Time with “Mecca” Time.
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Islamic religious and political leaders claim that Mecca is the “center of the Earth” and should therefore also be the center of time. Of course this is unwelcome news to the rest of the world which has used the 0 longitude, known as the prime meridian, to mark the start of each day. The 0 longitude runs through the Royal Observatory of Greenwich England, a research center for time, astronomy, and maritime studies for hundreds of years, which lends its name to Greenwich Mean Time or GMT. However, the Saudi’s seek to compel the 1.5 billion Muslims to set their clocks ahead three hours to establish Mecca as the time keeper of the world.
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The Saudi’s will unveil the world’s largest clock, just in time for Christmas. Perched atop the Abraj Al Bait Towers, the tallest building in the world, the massive, four-sided clock is a modern marvel. Five times the size of Big Ben’s clock face, each of the Mecca Royal Clock (as it is called) faces feature almost 100 million pieces of mosaic glass and 2 millions LED lights which will render the Saudi Royal Crest, the words “Allah is Greatest” in Arabic, and the time, visible for nearly 20 miles.
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Situated adjacent to the Kaaba, the most holy site in Islam and the building that Muslims face when they pray, the clock will be the crown jewel in the Saudi’s newly expanded Grand Mosque area in Mecca. Complete with a seven-star hotel, a four story shopping mall, and thousands of high end residences, the Abraj Al Bait Towers complex is has the largest square footage of any building in the world.
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Of course the Saudi’s are not relying on hope alone to force a worldwide change in time keeping. The spin machine has already begun. Egyptian cleric and television star Yusuf al-Qaradawi who hosts the popular TV show “Sharia and Life,” has been preaching the “correctness” of adopting Mecca as the new location of the prime meridian.
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Now, we in the West may scoff at the audacity of the Saudi’s attempt to rebrand time under the crescent moon. But 1.5 billion people, dozens of countries, and perhaps millions of businesses simultaneously advancing time by three hours and adopting different latitude and longitude boundaries would seriously disrupt commerce and transportation worldwide.
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Here in the US, as in many European countries, the government has bowed down to every whim of the minority Muslim population to the point of some judges actually using Sharia law in court to excuse the domestic abuse, rape, and even murder of women and children when the crimes were perpetrated by Muslim immigrants. Will Muslims in America successfully be able to challenge accepted time-keeping on the basis of religious freedom? Will Obama dictate Mecca Time be adopted here? We can all say that it will never happen….but who would have thought that a Mosque would go up steps from Ground Zero?
Alexandrea Merrell
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