Peak Oil or... what will it be like to live within our means?

(Click on image to enlarge)

Assalaamu Alaykum all,

I love this cartoon, I use it as my desk top at work because it is a good conversation starter and gives me a chance to talk to people about what is happening in the world and a way for people to understand those events in a light hearted way that hopefully will not result in the usual blank stares when you mention topics like Peak Oil and the coming economic crash.

First of all does anyone remember back to about a year ago, just before the recession hit when the petrol got REALLY expensive, and the mainstream media started talking about peak oil issues for a change? It was a quite odd time, because all my friends were like "oh, that is the thing you keep on about" and wanted further help and explanation.

Independent -Fade to black: Is this the end of oil?

But now most people seem to have blanked it from their minds, forgotten it ever happened. Its like as bad as the recession is, it doesn't cause people to collectively forget the matter as too scary, too big a matter to deal with.

Now don't go, because your mind is now pushing you to close the page or go look at something else but in reality that is your way to cope with the biggest problem that is ever going to come mess up your life and the life of your kids, it is so big you want to pretend it isn't going to happen and so you do this...


Its probably the biggest problem mankind is going to face as a species but absolutely no one is willing to talk about it.

Recession /depression, starvation, famine, deforestation, acidification of the oceans, species extinctions, desertification, global warming, even nuclear war, o' we can talk about them but we don't want to talk about the Elephant in the room. Well I do want to talk about the elephant in the room so if you've read this far you might as well go further and finish reading the post.


The general point of todays Naseehah is this...

Our whole economy, no our whole modern civilisation is built upon Oil, well other fossil fuels also but mainly oil (I know I've mentioned this before but I cant stress this as a reason for Hijrah enough).

So this oil doesn't just get you to work and back, it gets all your food to the super market from the farmers field, it gets the lorries and trucks around that help our society run, without it we are not just going to hit a downturn, our society is going to come to a dead stop. Dead being the important word there.

Lets take the UK as our model here to explain what this means.

The UK before oil could provide enough food to feed between about 5-8million people, sometimes more. But 5-8million seems to be the stable figure. We did this by farming the land, then transporting the food to local market towns for selling and it kept the whole of pre-industrial society ticking along nicely.

Then along came Coal, all of a sudden you don't need to be near a water supply for power anymore and instead industries moved closer to where their suppliers and customers were in the cities.

Further down the line people realise you can use this coal to power other machines, not just the factories and the train comes along. The train allows for food and other goods to travel further and leads to further efficiencies in food production and a population boom.

This population boom is accelerated by oil, with cars, trucks, planes etc all now possible and all the food you eat comes from all over the world.

The oil is also used to farm the fields much more efficiently so where as in the past your field might produce X amount of grain, but needed Y to be deducted for all your manpower to give Z amount to send to market, now the X is much bigger because of all the machines and the Y is much smaller.

So the amount of food getting to market is much bigger, all thanks to oil. Oil based fertilisers are also used to boost those crops again, no oil means no oil based fertilisers.



Hope you are beginning to get the picture now, because the Elephant is starting to get upset with us for ignoring it. We need to realise this problem will never go away. NEVER.

We all live in a society which is going through massive growth in numbers and consumption of the worlds resources, all based upon a finite base. Infinite growth based upon a finite resource.

That is right. Oil is a limited resource, but what does that mean? IT MEANS IT WILL EVENTUALLY RUN OUT.


Most of you probably just jumped to position two in your mental defence strategies... You just read the statement 'it means it will eventually run out' and assumed it will be some point off in the far distance so thought "OK, it's going to go, but that is the future, that is a long time away."

Another classic defence, once the elephant is actually noticed, file it away for dealing with later.

But this is just like global warming, in that the longer we leave things the worse they become. It is not like global warming in that it cannot actually be solved.

I probably just lost a few more of you just then. "wait a minute? did he just say there is no cure? no solution?"

Those still with me here, who didn't hit the little X in the top right corner are probably in uncomfortable territory but this is the place you need to be in, you didn't run away and hide under your covers and pretend nothing is happening, you've at least got an idea that oil is going to run out and there is no cure for this problem.

Some of you might be thinking, but what about renewables? The sun hits the earth with 90,000 times more energy a day than we need. Yes that is true, but 90% of it is reflected right back out into space. So you will think OK, then 9,000 times more energy than we need in a day.

But you forget that energy is not easy to capture, it also uses plastics to make the technology to do it and plastics come from... oil.

Other renewable energy technologies still use oil to power the machines, to get the metals and other materials out of the ground to the factories, from the factories to the distribution centres and finally out to the field where they don't work particularly well and require a little man in a petrol powered van to come and fix it.

So they are a sticky plaster over a gaping wound.

So when will this oil disaster happen? Surely even if the oil is running out there is still quite a lot of it there isn't there?

Yes there is, but most of the easy to get stuff is now gone. This is the meaning of the term 'Peak Oil.' It is not the point where oil runs out, but the point where the worlds oil supply stops rising and starts falling. At that point the rising demand for oil that keeps all our towns, cities and even villages these days from starving will start to break down.

The UK and other western nations will use their military might to push on for another few years but in the end the scenes of famine and disaster we'll see from Africa, Asia and South America will come to haunt the landscapes of the West also and the western model of civilisation all based upon oil will come to an end.

The UK with its 65Million plus population will go back to only being able to support a few million, and you can imagine the scenes of the disaster, war, civil strife, starvation (and probably canibalism) that will take place when that happens. All over the world the same scenes will play out.

Harsh isn't it?

Quite depressing also, but then not really. You see every disaster is also an opportunity, an opportunity to live within our means, to live closer to the land and be free of many of the more nasty aspects of capitalist greed such as the massive pollutions we push into the environment.



In short an opportunity to live a better way, a way more in keeping with the commands of Allah!


Those people left, (for which the Muslims have to ensure we are a great a proportion as possible by being prepared) we will have to go back to farming or living in small towns, living closer to the natural base, living a life more in accordance with the life led by our ancestors.

For me that is a great thing, I don't particularly like modern life, its evil and stinking and the maybe that is why I saw the elephant in the room when everyone else didn't, but Allah has given us this great leveller against our enemies.


They've got planes, helicopter gun ships and tanks but within a short space of time they will just be rusting lumps of metal sat uselessly in fields and the Muslim lands will be free from the kuffar armies with only the apostate rulers left to deal with.

Now when is all this going to happen? Because those of you interested in Hijrah might be thinking if there is no oil, no planes flying, then really I don't want to get stuck here so maybe I need to go now.

Depends. Not a good answer I know but it might be 50 years, it might be 5 years. In truth is we don't know as it depends on a whole set of variables that are constantly changing, the demand for oil, the supply, the amount left (a state secret in many oil producing countries like Saudia), whether Allah sends any other disaster to hit whilst we are waiting for this one.

It therefore makes sense to leave as a matter or urgency, not to wait too long and when you go don't go somewhere in an even worse position like Qatar which has a couple of million people living an a desert where only a few thousand lived before, unless you are planning on going there to make more money to buy your farmland somewhere else.

The place you should be looking to make Hijrah towards should be closer to the natural economic base, agriculture and the lesser developed the better as it will then have less far to fall, even better somewhere fortified which today would cost you only £30k or a little more as they are in remote locations but in the future will cost far, far more as more and more people wake up to that damn elephant.

Hope I haven't depressed you all too much, and that like me you see the opportunities as well as the problems and that Inshallah we can all come out of this one alive and well with our families to help build a better society on the other side of the crash.

Assalaamu alaykum,
Abu Abdillah

Mohammed is most popular name for baby boys in London

Assalaamu Alaykum all,

Some of the kuf newspapers were going mental over the following Story,

Mohammed is most popular name for baby boys in London

I've linked it to the Daily Telegraph version as although it is a right wing newspaper, it tends to explain things better, using more than four and five letter words, unlike the Sun, Star or Mail.

The story is basically this... In London, the West Midlands and Yorkshire, the number one boys name is Muhammad (if you count all the different spellings of the name) and that the 3rd of the boys born in the whole of the British Isles in the last year were named after our beloved Prophet (saws).


This backs up some ideas I have had when seeing the maternity units for the birth of my children, where it seems a much larger proportion than you would expect of expectant mothers are Muslim.

This is not surprising for us as Muslims, after all Rasoolullah (saws) told us to have large families to increase the size of the Ummah but it is a shock for the kuffar who just see themselves being swamped by an army of small brown babies, taking over their towns and cities.

To a certain extent this is true, we are out breeding them and out converting them with several thousand people embracing Islam per year and Muslim families having around about four Children per couple, as opposed to the national average of 1.9 per couple.

But we also know that quantity isn't that great if the quality is lacking. If many of the little Muhammad's and Abdullah's are ending up as Drug dealers and pimps, or even worse working as bankers and policemen then the numbers don't count for anything.

This is why wherever we are, whether here in the UK, elsewhere in the West, or in a Muslim land, it is massively important we never EVER give up giving Da'wah, it being such a big part of our deen to call people to Allah.

When we all engage in such activities, calling each other to Allah, improving this Ummah, that is when you see not only the quality increase but the quantity to Inshallah.

When that happens then this country will be a true Muslim nation, but until that time it will remain an obligation for us to leave whilst ever we can and stop supporting the kuffar with our numbers and wealth in their wars against Islam.

Assalaamu Alaykum,
Abu Abdillah

Majestic Bluefin Tuna soon to be gone...

Assalaamu Alaykum all,

I admit I don't like Tuna, the canned stuff especially actually gives me the creeps, get goose bumps and horrid tingly feelings just thinking about it. Like most people in Britain my early experiences of Tuna was a smelly half eaten tin festering in the fridge.

The fishy smell is a big put off, only later in life did I learn this is not the normal smell of fresh fish, which is more like a salty sea breeze type smell, but tinned tuna especially has this disgusting smell and was a big put off right through my childhood and youth.

To top all that for a couple of months between uni courses I took a job at a Pizza takeaway, which had two big drawbacks, one being the oppressive heat of the pizza oven in the tiny kitchen and the other being I needed to pick up raw tuna with my hand in disgusting freezing cold oil from the fridge whenever someone ordered the sea food pizza.

(As a side note the takeaway was owned by a 'Muslim' from Iran who used to go out with his kaffirah girlfriend and used to rant and rave on a regular basis about his daughter who had rejected his western lifestyle and refused to take off her hijab or meet with men! "I didn't bring her here so she could life like this" he used to say (I've removed the expletives he used to use as this is a Muslim blog)).

So Tuna and me have never got on, even when I have eaten fresh Tuna in Spain, which has a slightly fishy Chicken taste I still can't get the mental trauma of handling the raw oil drenched cold tuna from my mind and I find I can't enjoy what would otherwise be a excellent food.

But despite my mild phobia I know I need to write to inform people of the demise of the Blue fin Tuna, a Mediterranean Beauty of massive size, growing to 6 to 8 foot long and being one of the top predators in the Med.

This Blue fin Tuna has been prized as the king of fish since the times of the Roman empire, probably much before but we can see wherever man left a written record along the med he wrote of his love for the Blue fin Tuna.

Its taste, size and beauty is 2ND to none amongst the fishes of the Mediterranean sea. Its a super fast killing machine gobbling up all the other little fishes and being pray to non but man.

Soon however due the greed of man the fish will effectively be gone from the seas, fished so much that it is down to 18% of its 1960's as the super trawlers and smaller fishing boats of the European fishing feet, which have destroyed this fish stock to such a level that it will no longer be viable to fish.

You see, although there will still be a few left, blue fin Tuna or indeed any species needs to be able to find its mate to breed, otherwise the population level cannot recover or will recover very slowly.

This is especially true of big slow growing animals like the Tuna so this great bounty and natural resource given to us by Allah will be destroyed by the hands of greedy men who are willing to take a big share now knowing the resource will then be gone for their children and future generations.

Allah addresses this when he says in the Quran,

ظَهَرَ ٱلۡفَسَادُ فِى ٱلۡبَرِّ وَٱلۡبَحۡرِ بِمَا كَسَبَتۡ أَيۡدِى ٱلنَّاسِ لِيُذِيقَهُم بَعۡضَ ٱلَّذِى عَمِلُواْ لَعَلَّهُمۡ يَرۡجِعُونَ

Corruption doth appear on land and sea because of (the evil) which men's hands have done, that He may make them taste a part of that which they have done, in order that they may return.
Surah ar-Rum, verse 41

But mankind isn't listening to the warnings that Allah is sending us, and may well end up being punished with a calamity not visited upon any other people before.

Before when a people went astray, they were punished alone, now the whole world is astray and the time may soon come where we all suffer collective punishment for the harm we do the creation of Allah out of our own greed and false sense of self-importance.

Mankind is ruler over the earth, yes. But he is not the owner, he is only the caretaker and if we hand it back to its owner in a worse state then we found it then we will all be answerable, either in this life or the next.

Assalaamu Alaykum,
Abu Abdillah

An observation on the UK

Assalaamu Alaykum all,

It's strange but as I continue to make plans to make Hijrah, the UK is becoming more and more closer to Islam.

The Da'wah stalls here in my home town more often than not gets a shahadah or two each month, sometimes each week and there are more and more reverts you see in the masaajid and in the community at large.

I am presently working as a HR Administrator and so have to screen application forms, and you can see the huge numbers of reverts with Muslim first names and native second names, like Yasmin Smith or Abdullah Brown (made up examples, not real people as far as I am aware). These reverts are making up about one in twenty of the younger people applying for the company I work for.


When the right wing nutcases tried recently to protest at the building of a Masjid in Harrow, London, over 2000 young brothers turned up to defend the Masjid and fight if necessary to defend Islam.

Subhanallah, think about that... Could we imagine such scenes only a few years ago? No, it is almost unimaginable and shows that Islam is coming back around the world. Look at the black Shahadah banner flying from the lines of the Muslims, doesn't it fill your heart with Imaan to see such scenes?

In Birmingham, Luton, and all over London, whenever the kuffar have been able to muster a hundred or so skin heads and football hooligans to cause trouble and try to attack the Muslims, the Muslims have stood up and fought back.

Another thing you will see is increasing numbers of brothers forgetting the cultural jahiliyyah of their parents and embracing Islam in a much fuller more comprehensive fashion, their mothers and aunties may cry out "how will you find a wife with that big beard on your face?"

But the brothers respond, "if the sister is bothered by this, I wouldn't want to marry her anyway."


The sisters the same, 20 years ago only a small minority wore hijab, now the majority do and a large number of them are wearing the Niqab also mashallah and showing Islam on the outside.

Both brothers and sisters are forgetting the cultural weddings and the masaajid are getting requests to hold weddings and walimas in the masjid, a small affair for the Muslims not the huge jahil weddings with the bollywood and free-mixing. Yes the good weddings are still in a minority but the community is changing, and it is changing for the better every year, every month it seems you see some new sign of Islam in the community.

Islam is both inner and outer and yes I know many of these newly practicing brothers and sisters are lacking in adhab and sometimes a little hizbi in their mentality but still lets make the 70 excuses for them required in our deen, many of them are only new to practicing so lets kindly advise them and help them inshallah to a better, fuller appreciation of our deen, many of us were in their position not long ago.

Yes, Islam is coming back, with the Kuffar on the back foot in their war against Islam, openly admitting they are losing the War in Afghanistan but still whilst the fight is on we are obliged to leave this land and migrate to one where we are able to help the deen without having to worry about the midnight knock on the door.

Look at this kuf soldier, he is crying. He is crying not because he is making Tawbah to Allah like we do, especially during this month of Ramadhan, but out of the 'shock and awe' of seeing the Muslims slaughter his comrades in arms, they are fighting for narrow nationalistic concerns, money and career and for their democracy and other kufr ideals but yet they are afraid to die and do hate to lose. Where as for the Muslims who fight in the correct cause, we either win the battle or are shaheed, we win or we win. There is no loss for the Muslims.

Despite all this my intention for Hijrah remains firm, if the troops of this country are still occupying the Muslim lands and the government supporting the kufr their I cannot remain here and keep increasing the numbers of this land, every £ I give in tax helps them where as at least if I was out of this land then this wouldn't be the case.

The law here has still not changed in regards to autopsies, so I still don't want my wife, children or indeed myself being cut up and dissected upon our deaths, feeling each cut like we were alive.

And the environmental and economic disasters are still likely to be coming soon, soon it will not even be possible to leave when the oil prices start to rise to such rates that only the very rich can fly.

So yes we are still leaving, despite all the good signs of the Islamic revival in the UK but whilst ever we are here then we will continue to work to establish Islam, just as we would wherever we were living and who knows, maybe we'll just end up doing enough to bring this country to Islam as a whole system and we can end up stopping here anyway and we'll get the reward of the one who does Hijrah for our intention and the reward of the one who does Da'wah and establishes the deen.

Assalaamu Alaykum,
Abu Abdillah

World's oldest Bible, the Codex Sinaiticus

Assalaamu Alaykum all,

For any Christians who might read this, peace be upon those who follow righteous guidance (the greeting our prophet told us to use with the people of the book, the Jews and the Christians)

Many brothers and sisters who come across Christians on a regular basis, either in their lives or in Da'wah activities might have heard them mention in response to Muslim allegations of the Bible being corrupted and from differing, contradictory manuscripts, that there is an old version of the Bible that has been found and so therefore this allegations are incorrect and can no longer be used.

So lets examine this claim, regarding this 'bible,' the world's oldest and see if it does indeed hold true that this disproves the claims of Islamic scholars on the Bible, that it is from contradictory and fragmented sources and therefore cannot be relied upon for guidance and salvation.

The Codex Sinaiticus is indeed very old, much older than any other Bible, and was set down sometime around or just before 350 CE. (So could easily be corrupted before then anyway)

Like the Bible, it is a collection of earlier works, scrolls which were copied from other scrolls, copied from other scrolls, etc, etc, going back 300 years to the time of Jesus Christ (upon him be peace), with no recorded chain of narration, i.e you don't know who passed on the information and indeed whether they were reliable or liars, or people with bad memories etc.

However this is where the similarity ends, and where the claims of the Christians to hold an 'original Bible' come seriously unstuck.

As already mentioned, the Codex Sinaiticus comes from the time of about 350CE, the time the Bible was also being put down but contains serious differences with the modern Bible, whole different books added which were stuck out by the people who put together the Bible.

So rather than having the world's oldest Bible, what the Christians really have is yet another version of the Bible, to put alongside their 5600 scraps and scrolls, another set of more contractions to sort through and decide whether to keep or discard from their book. The Bible and the Codex seem to be rival manuscripts, not at all similar in the detail.

'The Shepherd of Hermas,' a book supposedly from the 2ND century CE is included in the Codex, but this is struck out of later Bibles. One whole section, are the Christians gong to restore this book now? even though they struck it out for disagreeing with their doctrine later?

The wording of the lord's prayer is different once again, from the 5600 fragments and scrolls which exist, as well as now the codex the Christians don't even have an agreed upon version of the Lord's prayer, the only line all versions agree upon is "Our Father who art in heaven," every line there after being up for dispute and argument.

Yet this book full of contradictions, where the last words that Jesus is supposed to have spoken is also up for dispute when he was supposedly on the Cross, and even the modern Bible has two different version of his last words, is held up as the word of God! As if the almighty creator of the heavens and the earth makes mistakes in what the Christians consider to be his last guidance to mankind.


How can they possibly compare such a book to the Quran? Unchanged and unchangeable by the hands of man. How can the Muslims let such a claim to go unchallenged?

Could Muslims imagine following a Quran, where we were not even sure of the wording of al-Fatihah? Never mind the rest of the book.

This is what the Christians ask you to follow, this book, full of flaws and contradictions, lies and mistakes which they pass off as the word of Allah, blaspheming against him as if he was unable to preserve his word if he wished it.

So next time the Christians tell you about this oldest bible they have found be ready, challenge them, don't let them keep telling people these lies.

Remember, the codex differs in the text in each book and in the books included, the codex is therefore not a world's oldest bible, but a different version of the bible, a rival to the bible, with different wordings and meanings to it but just as flawed and contradictory as later Bibles.

The codex itself is contradictory, both to itself and to the later Bibles used today, so in fact rather than destroying only reinforces our argument of the Bible being corrupted and from differing and contradictory texts.

Explain to the Christians the problems with the Bible, whether it be the codex or modern version, that these contradictions show this book is not protected by Allah, unlike the Quran, that it therefore cannot be the word of almighty Allah as Allah does not lie, nor does he make mistakes.

Finally call them to Allah, show them the Quran, a book unchanged for 1400 years, a book that has no flaws and no contradictions and challenge them, challenge them by saying "if I can prove to you that the Bible has contradictions and flaws, will you agree with me it is not from God? and if you can prove to me the Quran has one single flaw or contradiction it is not from God?"

Get them to agree to this challenge, don't be afraid, the Quran has no flaws and no Christian out of the hundreds I have spoken to has ever, EVER been able to produce one. Whereas the bible is so full of flaws it is easy to show them the errors and problems with it.

Once you have shown them the Bible is flawed and contradictory, whereas the Quran has been preserved without contradictions and flaws then ask them which is truly God's word? which should be followed therefore and relied upon for guidance so we can be saved?

Assalaamu alaykum,
Abu Abdillah