The idea that the earth is flat, and therefore unlike the surface of a
sphere may have a centre, may owe something the teaching of the Grand
Mufti
of Saudi Arabia, Abd-al-Aziz Abd-Allah ibn Baaz, the influential Islamic
jurist. The Wikipedia article "Flat Earth" re****ts that:
'In 1993, he is said to have issued a fatwa, or religious ruling,
declaring,
"The Earth is flat. Whoever claims it is round is an atheist deserving of
punishment."While the edict re****tedly caused embarrassment for many
Saudis,
Ibn Baz issued a statement maintaining that the earth was spherical but
expansive enough to be flat and saying that he "only" denied Earth's
rotation.'
We find him, typically resorting to double-talk and a further scientific
falsehood.
Note that here we find an Islamic scholar of the highest standing denying
scientific truth - even in his retracting of his provocative assertion -
to
which the beliefs of a tiny minority of Christian fundamentalists who
believe the earth is flat - a belief common among Muslims - is not
comparable.
It is, by the way, a myth originating in the 19th century that ancient and
medieval Christians believed that the earth was flat:
'Several scholars have argued that "with extraordinary [sic] few
exceptions
no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third
century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat" and that the
prevailing view was of a spherical earth.' (Wikipedia article "Flat
Earth".)
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