At the sound of the woman being stoned, Mecca Standard Time will be...

It's always hilarious when religious people try to use science to back up their claims to the existence of their particular brand of sky pixie but this is the first time I've seen the Muslims crawl out from under their rock only to make themselves look more backward than we thought they were in the first place.

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.

Right. Well if you were to cut out a model of the UK and find the place where that model would balance you find that its somewhere just outside Blackburn, Lancashire. However I don't see anyone proposing the town famous for having lots of holes and a really cheap shoe shop to be made capital of Great Britain.

So what piece of scientific wisdom have they come up with to bolster the claim of Mecca Standard Time?

One geologist argued that unlike other longitudes, Mecca's was in perfect alignment to magnetic north.

Errr.. where did this guy do his training. First thing they taught us when I did Geology (University of Lancaster, class of '86, I graduated Draco Cum Laude) was the Earth's magnetic poles move about and that "magnetic north" is different depending on where you are, it even flips round so north becomes south every so often. Ali Al Bottyburp, muslim scientist extraordinare, can't even claim that it lines up at Mecca because a quick shufty over at the US Geological Service shows that the magnetic deviation at 21°25′00″N 39°49′00″E happens to be 2.6 degrees. Here's a nice map if you want to have a look yourself.

But what's science when you can wilfully ignore history.

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.

Not really. We were a pretty important maritime power but not particularly colonial at the time and I think you'll find that the world adopted the zero meridian at Greenwich because the Brits just happened to be the first to discover a reliable method of working out longditude during sea voyages. Either way most people call it "UTC" from the French for "Universal Co-ordinated Time" now.

I think it's high time we put to bed this myth of the muslim world being great scientists who discovered astronomy, chemistry and the like. They didn't. At best they managed to preserve Greek learning and just plundered the rest from places like India.

And as to adopting Mecca Standard Time, when you lot can present me with a Geologists that is acually capable of passing a GCSE science exam then I will listen to you, and will still tell you to fuck off.