The Earth is Fixed! And Other Wahhabi Knee-Slappers...

In support of the notion that Wahhabism is anti-intellectual/anti-reason/anti-science and thus anti-Islam:

"Abd al-Aziz bin Baz was the chief cleric of Saudi Arabia, the head of the Council of Senior Religious Scholars for three decades. He had a great impact on the passing of regressive and oppressive laws in Saudi Arabia, including the ban on women's driving. A book authored by Bin Baz was published in 1975 carried the following title: "Scientific and Narrative Evidence for that the Earth is Fixed, the Sun is Moving and it is Possible to Go to the Planets." The book was not published by any publishing house; it was published by none other than the Islamic University of Medina.

In that book, Bin Baz complains about a new heresy; he is saddened to see, well more accurately, hear, people talking about motion of the earth and he wants to put a stop to that heresy. In page 23, Bin Baz after listing some hadiths issues a fatwa, asserting that those who believe that the earth is rotating are kafirs (disbelievers), and if they were Muslims before they become apostate. The Saudi leader does not stop there and explains the ramification of fatwa: any Muslim believing in the rotation of earth lose his or her right to life and property; they should be killed!

Bin Baz, in his book, quoted some verses and many hadith to support his position that the earth is fixed. After his expressing the religious verdict of death penalty for the apostates who believe in a moving earth, he included the following reasoning as his scientific evidence:

"If the world was rotating as they assert, countries, mountains, trees, rivers, seas, nothing would be stable; humans would see the countries in the west in the east, the ones in the east in the west. The position of the qibla would change continuously. In sum, as you see, this claim is false in many respects. But, I do not wish to prolong my words.""

- Edip Yuksel