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US President Barack Obama's Kenyan grandmother says she prayed during a hajj pilgrimage to Mecca for the American leader to convert to Islam, a newspaper revealed on Thursday. "I prayed for my grandson Barack to convert to Islam," said Sarah Omar, 88, in an interview with Al-Watan Saudi daily held in Jeddah after she had performed hajj. The paper said that Omar was in Saudi Arabia on pilgrimage along with her son, Obama's uncle Saeed Hussein Obama, and four of her grandchildren.

Saudi Arabia has reassured Muslims worldwide that there will be no shortage of Zamzam water as more than two million pilgrims prepare to converge on Makkah, Islam’s holiest shrine, local newspapers reported on Friday. “The water level of the Zamzam Well at the Grand Mosque has increased,” they quoted Yousif Al-Wabil, Assistant Deputy President for Affairs of the Grand Mosque, as saying. “This has happened because many private wells dug by citizens are no longer draining water from the Zamzam Well.” Al-Wabil said the previous homeowners in Al-Shamyia neighborhood in the holy city had dug these wells in their houses...

Non-Muslims are barred from entering the cities of Mecca and Medina — not merely barred from building synagogues or churches, but barred, period, because their infidel feet are deemed unfit to touch the ground. This is not an al-Qaeda principle. Nor is it an “Islamist” principle. It is Islam, pure and simple.

A giant clock on a skyscraper in Islam's holiest city Mecca began ticking on Wednesday at the start of the fasting month of Ramadan, amid hopes by Saudi Arabia it will become the Muslim world's official timekeeper. The Mecca Clock, which Riyadh says is the world's largest, has four faces measuring 43 metres in diameter. It sits 400 metres up what will be the world's second-tallest skyscraper and largest hotel, overlooking the city's Holy Grand Mosque, which Muslims around the world turn to five times a day for prayer. "The Holy Mecca Clock started with the order of King Abdullah...

For centuries, an astronomy observatory in Greenwich, London -- the namesake of Greenwich Mean Time -- has been the reference point for lines of longitude, ships' navigation on the world's seas and the time zones used today. But Saudi Arabia wants to change that. It's building what it calls the largest clock in the world, atop the second-largest skyscraper in the world, in the Islamic holy city of Mecca -- in hopes of replacing GMT with "Mecca Time." The clock dwarfs London's Big Ben, with four huge faces each about 130 feet in diameter and inscribed with the Arabic words...

Giant Mecca clock seeks to call time on Greenwich For more than a century, a point on the top of a hill in south-east London has been recognised as the centre of world time and the official starting point of each new day. But now the supremacy of Greenwich Mean Time is being challenged by a gargantuan new clock being built in Mecca, by which the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims could soon be setting their watches. Due to start ticking on Thursday as the faithful begin fasting during the month of Ramadan, the timepiece sits atop the Royal Mecca Clock...

Muslims around the world could be setting their watches to a new time soon when the world's largest clock begins ticking atop a soaring skyscraper in Islam's holiest city of Mecca. Saudi Arabia hopes the four faces of the new clock, which will loom over Mecca's Grand Mosque from what is expected to be the world's second tallest building, will establish Mecca as an alternate time standard to the Greenwich median. The clock is targeted to enter service with a three-month trial period in the first week of the holy month of Ramadan on or about August 12, according to...

The Mecca Synagogue and Jewish Cultural Center, a 13-story Jewish cultural center proposed for a site two blocks from Mecca, an Islamic holy site, cleared its likely final hurdle when the Mecca and Medina Landmarks and Preservation Commission voted 9-0 to deny protected landmark status to the building currently occupying the site, a "I Hate The Jews" t-shirt stand. The decision is believed to be the last legal impediment to the project going forward. The commission, whose 11 members are all appointed by Saudi King Abdullah, held its meeting yesterday morning in lower Mecca, in the shadow of the Masjid...

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — People in the world's most populous Muslim nation have been facing Africa — not Mecca — while praying. Indonesia's highest Islamic body acknowledged Monday it made a mistake when issuing an edict in March saying the holy city in Saudi Arabia was to the country's west. It has since asked followers to shift direction slightly northward during their daily prayers. "After a thorough study with some cosmography and astronomy experts, we learned they've been facing southern Somalia and Kenya," said Ma'ruf Amin, a prominent cleric of the Indonesian Ulema Council, or MUI. "We've revised it now...

Indonesian Muslims told to change prayer direction JAKARTA, July 16 — Indonesia’s Muslims learned today they have been praying in the wrong direction, after the country’s highest Islamic authority said its directive on the direction of Mecca actually had people facing Africa. Muslims are supposed to face the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia during prayer and the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) issued an edict in March stipulating westward was the correct direction from the world’s most populous Muslim country. “But it has been decided that actually the mosques are facing Somalia or Kenya, so we are now suggesting...

MAKKAH: A Saudi woman who is seeking a divorce from her husband has claimed that a judge has refused to listen to her complaints at five scheduled hearings because she came to court without a male legal guardian each time. “The court at Al-Jumoum outside Makkah city set five hearings in my case, but each time I went the judge refused to see me or listen to my case because I had no male guardian with me,” said the woman, Um Hasan. She and her estranged husband have been married for 17 years during which time they have had six...

FORMER boxing champion Mike Tyson, who converted to Islam while in jail in the 1990s, is visiting the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina on pilgrimage.Tyson, who was world heavyweight champion from 1986 to 1990, arrived on Friday in Medina with the Canadian Dawa Association for the umrah, or minor pilgrimage, the newspaper Okaz said. From Medina he will travel on to Mecca and plans to visit other Saudi cities, it reported. Tyson, 44, converted to Islam while serving a 10-year prison sentence, later commuted to three years, for raping a US beauty queen in 1991.

Would Muslims surrender Mecca? Should Catholics give up the Vatican? These may seem like ridiculous questions. The answer to both by any sane person would be "of course not." Why on earth would the answer to "Would Jews ever surrender Jerusalem?" be any different? The answer is simple. It shouldn't. With the exception of a seven year period in the sixth century when the Persians restored Jewish sovereignty, the Jewish people were denied a homeland from 70 C.E. until 1948. During that time the Jewish people suffered pogroms, expulsions, mass murder, persecution, and assorted other forms of denial of basic...

Why hasn't Osama bin Laden's terror network executed an attack on U.S. soil since 9-11? Simple, says Dr. Jack Wheeler, creator of an acclaimed intelligence website dubbed "the oasis for rational conservatives": The U.S. has threatened to nuke the Muslim holy city of Mecca should the terror leader strike America again. On his website, To the Point, Wheeler explains how the Bush administration has identified the potential of wiping Mecca off the map as bin Laden's ultimate point of vulnerability – the Damoclean Sword hanging over his head.

...Alamoudi, who was given power of attorney by several Gitmo detainees, even persuaded the Pentagon to let an al-Qaida-tied Saudi charity fly planeloads of Muslim-American soldiers to Mecca...

As we all know, Obama's grandmother was supposedly a Christian woman, or so he told us during the US elections. Obama also claimed he is a Christian, but for now we can probably confirm that Obama's grandmother is not a Christian, unless she went to Mecca during Hajj for other reasons, which we also doubt. On November 25, Obama's grandmother arrived in Saudi Arabia for none other than Hajj, the muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, which all Muslims are required to make if they can in their lifetime. Sarah Obama arrived in Saudi Arabia for Hajj on the 25th of November....

In his new film "2012", director Roland Emmerich reinforces a double standard by depicting the destruction of numerous Christian landmarks while sparing Islamic ones. The Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican and The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican all meet untimely fates in Emmerich's latest end-of-the-world extravangza. However, The Kaaba, the cube-shaped structure that is the focus of prayers and the site of the most important pilgrimage in Islam, was spared. And this double standard was not, it turns out, an oversight or mistake. A deliberate act In an interview with Sci-Fi...

President Obama continued his outreach to the world's Muslims today, sending greetings to pilgrims to Mecca. .... "Michelle and I would like to send our best wishes to all those performing Hajj this year, and to Muslims in America and around the world who are celebrating Eid-ul-Adha. The rituals of Hajj and Eid-ul-Adha both serve as reminders of the shared Abrahamic roots of three of the world’s major religions," Obama said in a statement. "During Hajj, the world’s largest and most diverse gathering, three million Muslims from all walks of life – including thousands of American Muslims – will stand...

The heaviest rain to hit Islam's annual hajj pilgrimage in years soaked the faithful and flooded the road to Mecca, snarling traffic as millions of Muslims headed for the holy sites. The downpours add an extra hazard on top of intense concerns about the spread of swine flu. Pilgrims in white robes holding umbrellas, some wearing face masks for fear of the flu, circled the black cube-shaped Kaaba in the Saudi Arabian city of Mecca, the opening rite for the hajj. But the shrine — Islam's holiest site — and the nearby rain-soaked streets did not see the usual massive,...

Mecca, 25 Nov. (AKI) - The grandmother of US president Barack Obama has arrived in Saudi Arabia for the 'Hajj' or Islamic pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, a Saudi daily said on Wednesday. Sarah Obama, 87, is being accompanied by a nephew and Obama's cousin, Omran. On Wednesday Sarah Obama was in the valley of Mina with an African delegation, according to the Saudi daily Okaz. Obama, the mother of the American president's father, lives in a village in Kenya and is one of the many guests of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud....