Islamic Religious leader now a online laughing stock

A Saudi cleric has publicly claimed that the Earth is a static object which is orbited by the sun, adding that centuries of evidence to the contrary is little more than fabrication.

Sheikh Bandar al-Khaibari is believed to have been speaking at a university lecture in the United Arab Emirates when a student asked him whether the Earth rotates or is stationary.

The Islamic scholar quickly replies 'stationary and does not move', before launching into a long-winded and confusing explanation that appears to the suggest that if the Earth was moving, airliners would never be able to reach their destination.

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After telling the student that the Earth does not rotate, Sheikh al-Khaibari attempts to back up his argument with religious statements and quotes from other Islamic clerics.

Perhaps struggling to make his argument understood, the religious lecturer then attempts to use a visual aid to illustrate how difficult it would be for airliners to travel if the Earth is spinning.

Beginning his bizarre summary, Sheikh al-Khaibari 'First of all, where are we now? We go to Sharjah airport [in the United Arab Emirates] to travel to China by plane, clear?'

Holding a cup of water aloft, the cleric adds: 'Focus with me, this is Earth'.

Over the next 30 seconds, Sheikh al-Khaibari enters into a baffling explanation of his point of view, claiming that if the Earth truly was rotating, then airliners could just stop in the air and wait for the country to arrive beneath them, rather than waste time actually flying.

'China would be coming towards it,' he argues. 

On the other hand, he said, if the Earth was moving in the opposite direction the plane would never be able to reach its destination because 'China is also rotating'.

On concluding his baffling explanation, Sheikh al-Khaibari went on to claim the NASA lunar mission was Hollywood fabrication and that humans have never been to the moon, according to Al Arabiya.

Video of the incident has inevitably proved a hit on social media, where users started an Arab-language hashtag that translates as #cleric_rejects_rotation_of_Earth.

One user pointed out that the footage first appeared February 15 - the 451th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's birth. Galileo was famously twice accused of heresy by the Catholic Church after publicly supporting the Copernican theory that the Earth and other planets rotate around the sun.

While many are using the hashtag to mock Sheikh al-Khaibari's views, others said it should be turned into a way to educate young people about the universe. - Daily Mail, February 17,2015.