Imitation, flattery, and junk science all in one.

Saudis are in the process of finishing a new office complex that will house the world’s largest clock, which is loosely based on the design of the Empire State Building and Big Ben. It will be one of the tallest buildings in the world on completion, and the Saudis hope to get Muslims to utilize Mecca Standard Time instead of GMT.

But here’s where the junk science comes into play.

A standard time by which other clocks were set was needed to organise global travel and communications, but in the Islamic world the idea that it should be centred on a part of London is seen as a colonial anachronism.

As Mohammed al-Arkubi, manager of one of the hotels in the complex, put it: “Putting Mecca time in the face of Greenwich Mean Time. This is the goal.”

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.”

Western scientists have challenged such assertions, noting that the Magnetic North Pole is in actual fact on a line of longitude that passes through Canada, the United States, Mexico and Antarctica.

Greater claim to the prime meridian? Really? It’s a zero magnetism zone? Idiocy knows no bounds.