Beat this: Earth does not move around the Sun, it is the other way round, says Saudi cleric

If you thought it was only Hindu radicals who were out to rewrite science, here is a Saudi cleric who will put all those people to shame who think Indians discovered aeroplane which travelled from one planet to another! Sheik Bandar al-Khaibari is confident that Earth… wait for it… does not move! Yes and it gets worse as he tries to elaborate on the point: [caption id=“attachment_2112171” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Sheik Bandar al-Khaibari. Image courtesy: YouTube screengrab.[/caption] “We go to Sharjah airport to travel to China by plane, clear? Focus with me… If you say that it (Earth) rotates, if we leave Sharjah airport on an international flight to China. The Earth is rotating, right? So if the plane stops still on air, wouldn’t China be coming towards it? True or not? If the Earth rotates on the other direction, the plane will not be able to reach China, because China is also rotating as the plane rotates.” The video clip, where the cleric was seen making these bizarre claims, went viral on social media. But this is not the first time that Saudi religious leaders have come up with out-of-the-world claims, which refute every scientific discovery made till date. Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz, who was the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia from 1993 to 1999, believed that the Earth was flat.   He only changed his mind in 1985 when Saudi Prince Sultan bin Salman returned after a week aboard the space shuttle Discovery to tell him personally that he had seen the Earth rotate! While the latest remark by al-Khaibari has been ridiculed on social media, it has also started a debate in Saudi Arabia over the country’s ultra-conservative religious authority, which even the newly-enthroned King Salman believes in. Al-Khaibari delivered this lecture on astronomy in late January. According to Freebeacon.com he has given similar lectures sponsored by the Saudi government. Quoting David Weinberg, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the website said: “It makes perfect sense for a Saudi cleric to be arguing that the sun revolves around the Earth because this is the sort of message they are getting from on high.” Watch the video here: