What time is it, y'all? It's Mecca Time!

To mark the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, a newly unveiled clock began ticking on a skyscraper in Mecca—in "Makkah time," a proposed Islamocentric alternative to GMT. [Al Jazeera/Arab News]

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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arikol

Ramadan?

Great. So my neighbourhood will be full of dangerous driver in blood sugar crises for the next few weeks!
Bevatron Repairman

There is a Meridian Hill in Washington DC due north of the White House on — what is that — 16th street? Apparently, during the War of 1812, there was a proposal to make 16th street a new American Meridian to stick it to the British. That didn’t keep either.
- adamnvillani
  
  Actually, the boundaries of several Western states were surveyed relative to the Washington meridian that passed through the Old Naval Observatory, which was legally the American meridian in use from 1850 to 1912:
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_meridian#Western_state_borders
- Ashley Y
  
  Bevatron, that Meridian Hill, or rather its longitude at 77Â°E, is the original reason that England sent colonies to America. http://www.hermetic.ch/cal_stud/gods_longitude.htm
Anonymous

I wonder if it keep time as it was still the 5th century, in accordance with all of Saudia Arabia’s policies that are stuck in the past. Opiate of the masses.
noble

I like PZ Myers’s take on it: it’s cargo cult science.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/from_the_department_of_not_get.php?utm_source=mostactive&utm_medium=link
Perkeaux

It usually customary to conquer the known world first, and then set the center meridian and so forth.
SB-129

happened to see this on the front cover of the UK’s Daily Express (think Daily mail, but for *real* racists) in a NOW-THEY’RE TRYING TO TELL US WHAT TIME IT IS kind of sense.

don’t care about the clock. do care about the fact that there’s about 10,000,000 racist UKians now telling their buddies that Al Qaeda want to redefine the concept of time.
- Anonymous
  
  Bet that really sucks, doesn’t it. Sauce for the goose, etc. You reap what you sow. Insert favourite cliche here.
blackanvil

For the whole “Makkah time” thing, are they going to go with UTC+3:00, or try to use local noon as the baseline? One’s just another variant on the current international standard, the other would be a whole different can of time-standardization worms.
SB-129

oh, and fuck the daily mail x2. big ben is a bell, residing in St. Stephen’s Clock Tower in the palace of Westminster.
- SB-129
  
  i meant fuck the daily express. but fuck the daily mail too. grr.
Art

‘So weird that the big clock would have ROMAN numerals.

Wouldn’t Arabic numerals have been better?
You know,like 1, 2, 3, etc? :)
- sabik
  
  What Roman numerals? All I see are unlabelled ticks.
  
  Also, wouldn’t that be Û±, Û², Û³, etc rather than 1, 2, 3?
- Anonymous
  
  Our system of numerals are Indian in origin. They came to Europe by way of the Arabs, thus the English term for them being “Arabic numerals.” So, the use of Roman or Indian numbers is pretty irrelevant as neither is native.
  
  But, there is a certain irony when I hear radical imams complaining about crusades and seeing Roman numbers.
MarlboroTestMonkey7

I’m not too sure about this, but I have changed accordingly the company’s ntp server (3500+ clients) to said reference.
Anonymous

I know what UTC is, but GMT has me baffled
Caroline

These people have scientific arguments to back their contention, as Makkah is situated in the center of the world.

This is like the guy in one of my college classes. When it was mentioned that “north=up” is an arbitrary mapmaking choice, he looked stunned and said “But — but that’s the way the planet hangs in space!”

But ultimately SB-129 is right. Proposing Makkah time to replace GMT is silly, but the ZOMG TERRORIST TIME racist freakout is much, much worse.
Anonymous

If Mecca became the new GMT then the international dateline would run between Pacific and Mountain Time, making a trip from Denver to Los Angeles take close to a day.

Imagine driving your car into tomorrow and then back again.
SteveKiwi

I would totally care about this, if I ever used GMT for anything.
Sork

Right inside the clock faces are these doomsday ray guns.
- Sork
  
  (skyscraperpage.com source)
TensorProduct

I propose a new meridian through Bin Laden’s backside crevasse.

TensorProduct
xzzy

Apparently the “scientific proof” that Mecca is the center of the universe/world/pizza is based on numerology focusing on the golden ratio.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gjkbw2ovl0&feature=related

(linked in the comments of the story about the clock)

I therefore conclude that Agitata, located in Nigeria, is the center of the world. Because it’s pretty close to 7N,7E, and I always liked the number 7.
klossner

There article doesn’t actually explain what Maccah time is. I wonder if it’s one of these: http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/196902/dinner.at.when..htm
- certron
  
  Ah, you beat me to it, klossner. I have always found that to be a fascinating alternative to the standard midnight-bounded day scheme.
  
  Why wasn’t there any uproar about Swatch and their @-denominated ‘Internet time’ that had ‘beats’ instead of minutes? Each 24 hours were divided into 100 pieces and midnight in Switzerland was @00 time.
Anonymous

I want to take this seriously, I really do. But seeing the title fly by and reading it as “Macca Time” dashes those hopes. Now all I can think of is Paul McCartney creating his own variable time system centered around wherever he happens to be at the moment.
Freddie Freelance

Let me point out that this would be “Makkah” time and not “Macca” time, which is the current time on Paul McCartney’s wrist.
Anonymous

it’s a very great achievement of arabian’s to build a another Big Ben….!!
deckard68

And it’s set 1400 years into the past, as well.
- Gisburne
  
  “And it’s set 1400 years into the past, as well.”
  
  Looks like they went a bit over the top with daylight saving time. If they move the International Dateline to pass through Mecca that is going to create some serious jet-lag.
Wibbly

Seriously … “It’s Makkah time now”?

Am I the only person who remembers McDonalds advertising?

Probably better that way, I guess.
Ugly Canuck

When i first get up in the morning, it’s mocha time!

Time is, time was.
Nonentity

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/7937123/Giant-Mecca-clock-seeks-to-call-time-on-Greenwich.html

According to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric known around the Muslim world for his popular television show “Sharia and Life”, Mecca has a greater claim to being the prime meridian because it is “in perfect alignment with the magnetic north.”

This claim that the holy city is a “zero magnetism zone” has won support from some Arab scientists like Abdel-Baset al-Sayyed of the Egyptian National Research Centre who says that there is no magnetic force in Mecca.

“That’s why if someone travels to Mecca or lives there, he lives longer, is healthier and is less affected by the earth’s gravity,” he said. “You get charged with energy.”

Yep, sure can’t argue with that.
Gisburne

Surely Ramadan is the wrong time of year to promote this clock – it will be running a little fast.

Stop! Hammer time
(shuffles left and right wearing baggy thobe)
- noble
  
  Dang it! Where’s the “like” button?
Antinous / Moderator

To be fair, Mecca time would be meaningful to about a billion people, whereas GMT not so much. If they just jiggered the time zone map so that Jerusalem and Mecca were in the same zone (which they should be anyway), about half the world’s population would consider this reasonable.
- Anonymous
  
  Except GMT is meaningful all over the world, because whatever its origins, it’s a standard we’ve all gotten used to when specifying global time. At some point, it doesn’t matter if the metre has an arbitrary definition.
- Freddie Freelance
  
  To be fair, Mecca time would be meaningful to about a billion people, whereas GMT not so much.
  
  To be fair, a large percentage of the computers that Cell Phone Carriers use for tracking & billing run on GMT/Zulu/UT Time, as well as all the world’s Militaries, International Shipping companies, and many of the computer systems used to coordinate sales between the world’s major Stock & Commodity Markets.
Prospero761

Mecca-Lekka-Hai-Mecca-Hienie-Ho! Sorry, it was the first thing that popped into my head. I couldn’t help myself.
Francesco Fondi

The photo looks more like Las Vegas than an “holy” place…
Brainspore

Makes sense if you genuinely believe that Mecca is the center of the world.

Didn’t someone just recently come up with suggested guidelines for Muslims in space? I imagine that kneeling toward Mecca is a lot harder when you’re weightless and hurling around the earth at 18,000 miles an hour.
- civver
  
  It may be fast, but keep in mind that the Earth is huge. The relative movement might be minor.
bassplayinben

Had they invented the precision chronometer first it wouldn’t be a problem, now would it?
cory

“Many scholars are of the opinion that Makkah Time can provide the world an alternative to the GMT. These people have scientific arguments to back their contention, as Makkah is situated in the center of the world.”

Proving that stupid bigotry exists in equal measure on both sides of the Islamic divide.
- Alex_M
  
  Well, at least they put ‘scientific’ within (in this case appropriate) scare quotes the second time they used it.
  
  Sounds like a ridiculous idea. First replacing a nice secular standard with a religious one. The location of Greenwich, has no particular significance other than the Royal Observatory was there.
  
  But more importantly it doesn’t make sense. If ‘Mecca time’ is just shifted GMT, then it’s redundant. More importantly (from the religious POV), it’d be out of sync with the Arab calendar, which is lunar, and not accurate enough for the modern era. OTOH if it was to be synced with the Arab calendar, then it’d become needlessly complicated for everyone else to use.
  
  Another addition to the list of ‘S**t that ain’t gonna happen’.
sastbury

right-leaning UK tabloid rag The Daily Express has an interesting take on this, bordering on “muslims related to TERRORISTS stealing our time!” http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/192684/Does-giant-Mecca-clock-mean-time-s-up-for-our-GMT-
Alex_M

Oh, they finished the clock? Nifty. I’ve been following this build.. huge thing, just across the street from the mosque.

But I agree it’s very ‘Las Vegas’. It doesn’t get better that they destroyed a historic Ottoman fort to build it, either.

Apparently there’s little respect for history in Saudi Arabia these days, since the Wahhabis considering preserving the past a form of idolatry (!). Damn fundies.
MattB

Another Milwaukee claim to fame bites the dust. Why do the news reports about the clock insist on comparing it to Big Ben isn’t even the world’s (now) second biggest clock?
abulafia

Remind me again of all the astute, reasonable, and above al, scientific papers that have been presented and published by ANY of these ‘Saudi scientists’.

*tumbleweed*
Anonymous

It’s just the skyscrapers…you can see over the wall of the mosque…No! This is WRONG, people! Wrong! This is where Hagar looked for water, not an infidel…baseball park, you guys! What are you going to say…”Nice hotel room, you can see the Kaaba from here…” No. I do not like this. And I’m Anglican. So there.
Ashley Y

It turns out that “Makkah time” is actually UTC+0300, i.e. nominally 45Â°E. Mecca is about 40Â°E.

Way to stick it to the infidels, Saudi Arabia.
Gisburne

Just noticed that the clock is on top of a hotel complex. If this ’6 times bigger’ clock also has a bell 6 times bigger than Big Ben and chimes on the hour, there are going to be some sleep-starved, angry (and deaf) Muslims coming home from their Hajj.
The Hamster King

I’m looking forward to the new Islamic meter and Islamic kilogram. They’ll be bigger than the normal meter and kilogram and covered in gold and flashing lights.
Alex_M

I forgot to say: Not to mention that GMT isn’t even the standard anymore; UTC is.