Report: Muslim Leaders Want Mecca to Be Center of World Time Zones

Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) could be replaced by "Mecca Time," if a group of Muslim leaders get their way.

At the conference, "Mecca, the Center of the Earth, Theory and Practice," Muslim scientists and clerics called for the change, arguing that the holy city in Saudi Arabia is the center of the Earth and should be the reference point for world time, not Greenwich, England, the British Broadcasting Corp. reports.

One geologist at the Qatar conference said Mecca's longitude is perfectly aligned with magnetic north and should therefore replace the English city, which has been measuring time zones since 1884, the BBC reports.

Attendees of the conference also reviewed the "Mecca Watch," an invention by a French Muslim which reportedly rotates counter-clockwise and displays Mecca's direction from any point in the world, the BBC said.

The conference is part of a trend called “Ijaz al-Koran" or "miraculous nature of the holy text," which tries to find precedents for modern science from passages in the Koran, the BBC reports.

But its critics say Ijaz al-Koran confuses spiritual truth — which depends on constant faith — with empirical truth, which depends on ever-changing science, the BBC said.

Click here to read the full report at the BBC.