Qurbani

Nothing Crosses a Mother's Love

This reminds me of when my pet cat nipped me when I was clumsily handling her kittens, years ago. Or the wail of the second cat downstairs when it recovered the bodies of its newborn babies that were slain by a male cat. Of course, this one is raw and magnificent. And best of all, it has a happy ending.

Ramadan Kareem

May your fasts and good deeds be accepted on this Holy month.

Reconciling the Heart

Between my soul and God lie my heart and my deeds. Nothing else lies between us. It is fifteen years since I departed from the religious tradition of my family. Although I was confirmed into the Anglican Communion on Sunday 2 December 1990 by Bishop James Jones, my faith was already wavering. Within two years the doubt outweighed my faith: the doubts within my faith gave way to religious agnosticism, which in turn gave way to atheism. In time belief in God returned, but belief that a man was God never did. I became a searching agnostic, one who sought the truth. I did not know where this quest would lead me until I arrived at that destination—and it was only a destination within the journey, not its termination, for this pursuit of mine goes on. When I came to believe in Islam in 1998 it was not the end of the road, but its continuation.

By its very nature, agnosticism need not cause particular problems in the relationship between people, even if it is disliked. The agnostic has no commitments to observe, other than the call of his heart regarding sincerity. Thus he may attend family gatherings with ease, his presence never an intrusion. In the case of one who adopts another faith the situation is quite different: he has rites and principles he must observe which create difference. I have experienced both scenarios and I am acutely aware which is the most problematic.

It is impossible to ignore the fact that my belief in Islam causes deep unhappiness within my family. Despite suggestions to the contrary, this is a reality I have never denied. Yet doubt is cast on this claim of mine, for I apparently continue to stubbornly cling to my principles. Is this not evidence enough that I am unaware of the impact of my beliefs?

The answer is no. I am acutely aware of the feelings of those around me, but matters of faith—and of the heart—require action. While I am not a good believer and my practice is hugely wanting, I do believe sincerely. My faith is not something that I take lightly, nor is it something that I took on as a choice of fashion. I came down this path because I believe it to be the correct way to worship God. For this reason I cannot turn my back on it to bring ease in my personal relationships.

The heart and our deeds are all that lie between us and our Creator. Only two know what is in our heart and they are God and our selves. Faith or doubt, love or malice, sincerity or hypocrisy: these are known to us and to God alone. For me, the one aspect that recurred time and again was sincerity versus hypocrisy. It was this question that forced me to sit at the back of church and to utter only a few lines of the Nicene Creed for over two years. It was this issue which made the question of faith seem so difficult as I engaged in my search for the truth. In 1997 I was continuously writing about the matter, much to the distaste of friends whose rational minds had long since abandoned belief in God. The following reflects my feelings at the time:

You don’t want to reject their faith, you don’t want to be different, you don’t want to be an outcast; you just don’t have their faith, but at least you’re trying to find it. But it’s so hard to admit that. They prefer to hear that you’re lazy, because that’s not such a disgrace. You’re filled with fear, so you don’t admit openly that you’re completely lost. You’re hoping that someone will pick up on your blatant hints.

Half way through my first degree, I found myself with an intense thirst to find my way in faith. On the one hand I wanted to believe like every other member of my family, on the other I was adamant that sincerity before God was essential. Thus that same piece went on:

…I can listen to the readings, the gospel and a psalm. I can listen to the sermon and learn. But how do you think I feel when we all stand for the Nicene Creed, and all I can say is ‘I believe in one God the father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible’? You want me to say it all, but faith isn’t about you, it’s about God. Do you want me to be a hypocrite before God? Of course you don’t. I don’t go to church because I don’t have the strength or the knowledge to claim your faith and I refuse to lie in the Name of God.

Later on, having learnt something of Islam, I expressed similar concerns. I recently came across an old notebook into which I had poured by thoughts as my interest in the Muslim faith grew. Penned over two sides of lined note paper, I found a lengthy answer to a question somebody must have asked me around that time. I had obviously said that I could never be a Muslim and had thus written a series of paragraphs under four headings to explain why: the hypocrite; knowledge of one’s self; true belief; and fear of rejection. Each passage focussed on a matter that troubled me within. Of true belief I wrote:

I must believe: truly and truthfully. Of course I believe in God, our Creator, but the faith through which I should worship Him is still unclear to me. I refuse to have a blind faith; this is obvious, for would I have gone astray otherwise? To be convinced by man of the right path is not enough. The proof should be in the religion itself.

A fellow student, hearing my complaints about my lack of faith, once told me, ‘The problem with you is that you question it. I’d never question it.’ I was never able to accept this view, for I felt that it was important to be able to say what I believe with conviction. I was one who would say, ‘I’m not really sure, I’m confused, I’m lost,’ in contrast to the person who could simply say, ‘I don’t have a reason, I just believe it—it’s just my religion.’ The source of this lies in the heart.

Let us not be judgemental

He does not want to learn English,’ said the day centre volunteer as he pointed his finger at a young man sitting in the corner, a moment before going on to explain that if the man wanted to integrate into society, he must learn English.
While I agree with the comment, I was dismayed by my colleague’s misconception of certain immigrants, for as a recent refugee himself, I thought he ought to know better. Intrigued about where this conversation was leading, I asked why he said that.
‘The other day,’ he replied, ‘I met an elderly man who has been in the UK for 49 years, but cannot speak English.’ Glancing back at me, he continued: ‘He told me that he had been in this country for 49 years and that all his children were born in this country.’
Noticing the inconsistency in his story, someone else asked, ‘Where was he from?’ Apparently hesitating about saying he was a Muslim, he said, ‘I don’t know—some Arab country.’
I looked at him and thought my initial response should be to remind him that as someone who works at a day centre where newcomers and refugees are the main clients, he should not be judgmental. I reminded him that many young adults who come here are very confused and do not really know what their future holds.
He seemed to note my professionalism, yet he was still keen to put forward his comments. Just as I thought I had had enough, another colleague picked up on our conversation and added, ‘It’s a fact that Islamic people are a cause for concern at the moment for the government but it’s acting too late.’ Soon after that the conversation shifted onto the subject of ‘Islamic’ terrorism and the question of alleged Muslim non-integration.
The relevance of this was not clear to me—and I also knew that such talk was inappropriate in this work setting. Not wanting to get into an interminable debate, I pointed out that they were sitting in front of four Muslim women who were—with one exception—first generation immigrants. We had obviously made efforts to learn English and indeed are still learning. Amongst ourselves we speak at least two European languages in addition to our native tongues. Before they could respond with an argument concerning the mores of modern Muslim women—which to some extent is used to signify women without the headscarf—I reminded them that at least two of us were overtly Muslim in appearance.
It is a fact that some immigrants already have knowledge of English, either through direct experience or from study, prior to their arrival in the United Kingdom. My colleague who has strong views on the necessity of immigrants learning English comes from a country that has English as a second language. Others like myself, however, have a lot of catching up to do in terms of learning the language and continuing their education.
Unlike my colleague, I try to acknowledge the efforts of individuals to communicate in English, however little that might be. Just the other day I was walking down Euston Road in central London when a Portuguese woman asked me for directions. As she did not understand much English, I decided to show her the way as I was heading in that direction myself. In using many Portuguese words, it was clear that she hardly spoke English at all, although she had resided in the United Kingdom for a year and half. A year and a half after my arrival here as a refugee from Somalia, my English was much better than hers, despite the fact that I did not have an opportunity to go to school for over a year due to immigration statutes and other factors. Still, I did not judge her, for maybe one day she will go to English class and learn. Sometimes it takes time to learn a new language. We all have different abilities where learning languages is concerned. Thus in my opinion we should encourage people to speak and learn English, rather than labelling them as not interested.
I believe that nobody chooses not to speak the language of the country they have made their new home, but rather that some find it more difficult than others, while some find it almost impossible to learn. In addition, as many of us will appreciate, there are different levels of speaking a language: there must be a difference between communicating in a language and being fluent in it. Could we not say that the elderly man did well in telling part of his history in the United Kingdom to a stranger? Alas, this has not been appreciated by those that should know better. I can imagine that he has worked in factory for decades, paying tax like the rest of us and is now a retired British citizen, whose children use English as their primary language.
As for the notion of integration, I do not know what this means anymore. No doubt it means something different to each individual, but suffice to say, it is not only a question of language, but also of learning to live amidst a culture you may not understand or even agree with, but are willing to accept as the chosen culture of the citizens of the given country.
It is interesting to note that the debate on integration and immigrants often concentrates on Muslims, not just in print but also in social conversation. Yet it is never more irritating than when these views are championed by other immigrants.

"If You Could Kiss the Cheek of the Child in the Sweatshop That Made Your Shoes"

"If you could kiss the cheek of the child in the sweatshop that made your shoes...." (David Rovics)

Consider this blood-freezing extract from We Shop Until Chinese Workers Drop by Johann Hari:

Over the past decade, an old word once used in the Maoist gulags has come back to China. It is "gulaosi" - and it is used to describe the men and women who are literally being worked to death producing clothes, electronics and toys for you and me.

Wie Meiren was a standard-issue gulaosi, the kind you can find in every Chinese town. She was a 32-year-old woman with three kids who left her hungry village and travelled to Dongkeng, where she got a job assembling the toy cars for the British kids' market.

There, she was expected to work 360 days a year, from 7.30am to as late as 9.30pm, with only a half-hour break for lunch and fines for taking too long on the toilet. As in many Chinese factories, military drills were often yelled: "Long live the company!" If anybody argued back to the managers, they could be punched in the face.

One day, Meiren had a family crisis at home. She was forbidden by her bosses from going to take care of it - so she became angry and fainted. She forced herself to keep going to work for the next fortnight, but eventually she became so exhausted she collapsed - and died before she reached the hospital. The autopsy indicated gulaosi - heart and organ failure caused by extreme exhaustion.

Some 50,000 fingers are sliced off in China's factories every month. Tao Chun Lan was a 20-year-old woman from Sichuan province at the heart of China who moved to Shenzhen and got a job working in a handicrafts factory. One night, she discovered the factory was filling with smoke - and the workers were locked inside. Some 84 workers were burned or trampled to death. Lan jumped out of a window, irreparably damaging her legs. She has received no compensation. "They don't care if I am crippled for life," she says.

I will recommend the following documentary to anyone wanting to understand the abuse meted out to sweatshop labourers by both Eastern and Western corporations: The New Rulers of the World. What the above article has overlooked is the existence of Eastern corporations as well. For if you have walked into a $2 Chinese store, it is clear that there are indeed Eastern companies in the business as well. Now as I smooth the white strings on my brand new diary, I know that some bloodied hands tied them together. I got them cheap and I suspected and I must be strong next time. We all should be strong and demand better conditons for sweatshop labourers who work till death and their blood lends comfort to us. Here's to a savage human race. May Allah guide us and comfort those who are in pain.

My Islam

These aren't my words but that of someone special I know, and I hope they help you - they indeed helped me to get a perspective on things and all. In times when we have so many different kinds of Muslims and interpretations, I find this advice healthy and beneficial:

Because Islam covers every aspect of life it also guides us on how to purify the heart and be close to Allah through prayer and thikr. But the thing is that Muslims through the ages (even until now) tend to take one aspect of Islam and identify themselves with that and the other aspects are played down. So you find the salafi who concentrate on the rules; the black and white; the sufis who concentrate on the spiritual side; the ikhwanis who concentrate on political interaction; and so on. For me, I try to take Islam as a whole and make a balance between all the aspects. Allah forgive me for my shortcomings.

Adam Was From Earth...

And so are you!

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) once said:

A tribe must desist from boasting of their forefathers; if they will not leave off boasting, verily they will be more abominable near God, than a black beetle which rolleth forward filth by its nose; and verily God has removed from you pride and arrogance. There is no man but either a righteous Mumin or a sinner; mankind are all sons of Adam, and he was from earth.

Sometimes

Sometimes when I’m sitting alone
And my heart talks to the silence
Inside, I wish I was in Cairo
Or I could stand in Palestine
If mother were beside me
I would just need you to tell me
I used to be happy
But when they pushed me down
And asked my God's name
Nobody came to raise me
I just lived everyday in silence
I was looking for a home
The word danced out
Crept through the apartheid
And I saw you

Sometimes when I don’t hear from you
For more than what I can bear
I think I’m an orphan child
No where to go
And if I told you
That I wish mother were beside me
I don’t know what you would think
I thought I would fall into an early grave
If I remained in that state
I chose you in this maddening world
And when my tears rolled
I wish you were close
I think I’ll be making my life
Beyond the sea, and when I receive
I’ll come to see you in Cairo

In the Same Boat

Recently, I joined a pen pal site. As I wanted to talk to other Muslims, I typed the appropriate keyword in the search box. Lazily skimming through it, I came across some non-Muslim names. The one that I clearly remember was of a girl who had added a note that "blacks and Muslims" needn't write to her, while another was of a Danish youth saying that Muslims shouldn't boycott Denmark's goods and that it was the government's fault which was very bad and racist (I agree with him). Anyway, I didn't feel like writing to anybody -- the mood was gone -- and I believe I even blinked my eyes twice. But I got around to writing to a Muslim profile which claimed that nobody should send her pictures because she was blind. I was curious so I wrote to her to ask who read her all the letters and may Allah bless her.

Today in the morning I received a letter in my email from "Roy" and he had written to be my friend. But what struck out were his words, haunting as they are -- a testimony to what viles plague our common sense of humanity:

I'm happy to be your friend if you don't mind being friends with an African.

With a few corrections, that's what he just about said. And immediately my mind traced back to the "no Muslims and blacks" entry. To make him smile, I replied that the question was not whether I wanted to be his friend but whether he wanted to be mine. I'm not very passionate to regulary converse with "Roy" because he wants to improve his English and this venture is bugging (as I've learned from the second letter which I received a few minutes ago), but I think I will write to him once in a while. We are in the same boat: blacks and Muslims and Arabs; and yes, Europeans and Americans, too. It's sort of like Noah's ark where all creation is delivered to the Lord's refuge.

Food for thought

I often make fun of the eating habits of the Hemşinli people who reside in Artvin Province, Turkey—the group to which my wife belongs—but I am only joking. I make fun of their taste for Black Sea Cabbage, for every meal seems to involve this pale-leafed brassica, and I am often heard running off a list part truthful, part made up. Boiled cabbage, cabbage dolma, cabbage kofta, cabbage soup, cabbage fried with onion, pickled cabbage… It’s a variation on the old yarn about the Englishman’s love for the potato: baked potato, boiled potato, roast potato, mashed potato, potato chips, potato waffles and potato crisps. It is only jest, though, for I have a lot of respect for those who have managed to maintain their traditional diet, warding off the endless possibilities of consumerism. Cabbage and Hamsi—the prince of all fish known to Turks—is my staple diet whenever I go to stay in our village in that forested valley several miles inland from Hopa. Meat is not eaten all that much and I have a feeling that this is how it should be.

They say that the traditional English dish is ‘meat and two veg’, but in fact the meat element only has a history spanning a few hundred years. Cabbage was probably a staple of the English diet for epochs as well. Unbearable to us in our modern age, I appreciate, given our love of meat and variety. Not only are we used to great choice on the culinary front, but we have also come to expect it. Demand it even. We live in a society which has made food one great plank of consumerism and sadly—it seems—British Muslims have fallen for this modern sunnah , adopting the norms that surround us without question.

Vegetarian Muslims are sometimes lambasted by the majority for their abstention from the consumption of meat—some zealous individuals even go as far as to say that not eating meat is haram. Yet it seems to me that vegetarians are much closer to the sunnah of our religion than most of us. In the olden days, wealthy Muslims used to eat meat once a week, often on Fridays, while poor Muslims would consume it on the Eids. Most of the meals that the Prophet ate, did not have meat in them, peace be upon him. My friend who eats meat very rarely is simply following the model of the best of us.

I suspect the reason why some Muslims react so strongly to people who eat little meat has less to do with a concern for the prohibitions of our religion and more to do with the desires of our tongues and stomachs. Count the fried chicken shops along the length of the Uxbridge Road from Shepherd’s Bush in London to Uxbridge out west: these mostly Muslim-run establishments tell us of an insatiable demand. The delightful spread of the generous host for his guests is almost always a lavish stream of birianis and curries, chicken, lamb and mountains of meat-laced rice. The daily filling and emptying of the counters in the halal butchers tells us that we are a people who really do ‘do meat’.

But maybe we should control ourselves. Maybe we should ‘do meat’ a little less. Consider the words of Umar as recorded in the Muwatta: ‘Beware of meat, because it has an addiction like the addiction of wine.’ Well we see this all around us. The trouble is, our problem today is not just the addiction: what are we going to say about the way our food was farmed, the way the animals were slaughtered, the way it was cleaned, the way it was sold and the way we eat it? Consider the vast acreage of refrigerated units in our supermarkets always fully stocked with plump chickens: now and then, when I really think about it, I find it quite abhorrent. But I guess the small counter of my local halal butcher is not much different. Why abhorrent? I am not a vegetarian; it is just this insatiable demand of ours. I visited a commercial slaughterhouse one Eid and was horrified by the production line they had going there, but that’s how it has to be in a culture that demands meat as much as ours. When I was studying Geography and Development Studies a decade back, one of our lecturers—an expert in water politics—predicted that the next war in the Middle East would be over water. He may not have predicted the intervention of a non-regional army seeking out WMD or oil, but he made a strong case nevertheless. Much of it comes down to our demand for meat: the production of the tons of grain required to rear animals is dependent on the availability of adequate water supplies after all.

In our household, our consumption of meat has lessened slightly. Some days we eat wholly vegetarian dishes, some days an egg quiche, some days some trout or sea fish and, yes, sometimes some lamb or chicken. I started eating very little meat after my visit to the abattoir and suggested we became vegetarian. Over time, the meat returned in larger and larger quantities, until our next attempt to re-evaluate our habits. Latterly, our desire has been to find a supplier of meat that takes the welfare of animals seriously, that slaughters on the small scale, taking the kind of care that is impossible in a production line situation. While we bought our milk and fish from a dedicated supplier, we could never buy their organic meat because it is not halal. So we just found ourselves eating less meat instead.

Fortunately times changes, with a few Muslims now going into small scale farming as a result of their concern about the food we eat. No one else is doing it, they reason, and somebody has to, so it might as well be them. Their meat is obviously more expensive that the supermarket or butcher’s alternative, but if you only intend to eat it a couple of times a week, it needn’t be of concern. There has always been wisdom in the saying that we are what we eat, whether we like it or not. If we care about our spiritual wellbeing, we have to realise that our religion has a lot to say about the food we eat. And if we are sincere, we have to act on it.

In any case: in my humble opinion, Hemşinli dolma is far tastier than its vine leaf equivalent. Yes, cabbage turns out to be far more appealing than I ever thought possible.

What Can Be Believed?

Some say Muslims don't believe in freedom of speech and expression. Some say they are uncivilized and supporters of "terrorists". Some say Muslims are the Other. Some say let's lock up the Roma People in the Beltzec death camps because they don't belong. Some say it's all about manifest destiny and we are there to win. Some say it's all a big mistake, that they've come down to take our temples and churches and mosques and we've got to make a stand, a tired stand against these nomads. And I hear them...the leaders holler about their kind and their blood and their race under a shower of confetti. The dictators of the East and West don't understand now.

I say, don't be absurd. Look at your image in the mirror. Is it defined by the dehumanization of the Other? Is your image so frail that it can only exist by your screwed up patriotism. I say, some Muslims are indeed wild but just like the killers of Haditha -- not more. I say, some Muslims are indeed ignorant but just like the politicians in Washington -- not more. You talk of "Enlightenment" and throw heavy words like "civilization" and "freedom" into the faces of poor people while shooting them down. What with the beast and what with the armour!

You say it is all a plan to "Talibanize" the virginal West by the "new-caught sullen peoples, half devil and half child" (Kipling). You say I am not living up to the Bill of Rights because that's when the majority bites. You say I am an anti-American hoodlum who'd like to strap a bomb and go up in a "blaze of glory". I say I am afraid to die and afraid to kill; I may die but I won't kill. I say, everyone has a right to life like you and yours. And I won't stand still until your tanks and guns fall. You play your national anthems, and I mean all the nations, and while you play your anthems and you hang your flags, East and West, I'm left to think what with the pride...the pride that oozes from the wounds of your victims.

And I ask, what can be believed. That I am to conclude like Goethe that patriotism "ruins history", but what nation is free when her sisters lie confined. And I have been and I have seen the blood on her sleeves. Isn't it time we had a universal expression of solidarity that is kind and true? How about One God? One humanity will follow.

A Comment

"This country has gone over the top with political correctness. We as a society feel that Muslims have to have attention otherwise we are not being fair to them. Muslims have protested outsite churches making remarks about Jesus. Could a Christian abuse Muhammed outside a Mosque, without being arrested? NO" - Mr Holden, Northern Ireland

I can assure you that no Muslim would make offensive remarks about Jesus, as he is held in extremely high regard by the Islamic faith. Muslims love Jesus, in the same way that they love Abraham, Moses, Noah and others. Muslims also hold his mother Mary very dear indeed, believing that she was the most pious and noble of all women in the world, through every age.

I would suggest one of two things therefore: either the people you witnessed protesting outside churches making remarks about Jesus were not Muslims or they did not make remarks about Jesus. In the case of Christians abusing Muhammad, however, this is in fact a common occurrence. Indeed this occurs on a weekly basis at Speakers' Corner in Central London, without any intervention from the authorities at all.

You may find that Muslims themselves would much prefer to receive as little attention as possible, having made an overwhelmingly positive contribution to British society for many years. Many of the country's leading doctors are Muslim after all, specialising in vital areas such as CHD, neurology and cancer. Just a thought.

Yellow Skin and Slanted Eyes

This is a very interesting bit of news, with undertones of classic Orientalism, from Haaretz which reports the words of the Israel ambassador to Australia:

The Foreign Ministry on Friday condemned remarks by the Israeli ambassador to Australia in which he told Haaretz that the two countries are white sisters amid "the yellow race" of Asia.

"If the article is accurate, this is a grave and unacceptable remark," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The ministry said it will not return to business as usual if an internal examination confirms that the ambassador, Naftali Tamir, in fact made the comments attributed to him.

Tamir said that due to what he characterized as the racial similarities between Israel and Australia, the two countries should work together to enhance ties with other Asian countries.

"Israel and Australia are like sisters in Asia," Tamir said in an interview with Haaretz during a visit to Israel this week. "We are in Asia without the characteristics of Asians. We don't have yellow skin and slanted eyes. Asia is basically the yellow race. Australia and Israel are not - we are basically the white race. We are on the western side of Asia and they are on the southeastern side."

Racism in my view is the never-ending fulmination of the most evil. It is that sin coupled with extreme disobedience for which Iblis was/is punished by Allah:

And surely, We created you (your father Adam) and then gave you shape (the noble shape of a human being), then We told the angels, "Prostrate to Adam", and they prostrated, except Iblis (Satan), he refused to be of those who prostrate. (Allah) said: "What prevented you (O Iblis) that you did not prostrate, when I commanded you?" Iblis said: "I am better than him (Adam), You created me from fire, and him You created from clay." S. 7:11-12

Even though Iblis refused to obey his Creator, Allah the Lord of the Worlds, the reason he gave seems to be more convincing (if we're to take the line of racists) than theirs within the human race. I wonder what some of them would say if Allah had made them djinns among men. Whether it's Irshad Manji bad-mouthing and demonizing the Palestinians and clicking photographs with two smiling children from the same camp to show her "humanity", the little ones having no idea what she conceals in real and how she advocates their present state; or George Bush saying that Iraqis are "tolerating the violence" (655000 dead!) in their bloody war for freedom which the so-called liberators said they would get. Never mind the fact that the first place the US military captured in Baghdad was the Oil Ministry. Never mind dead bodies found drifiting in the Tigris everyday. Who are they? What are their names? Did they have families? Were they happy when they last left home? Was there a real need to go out? Did they have aspirations, dreams and a simple imagination? Did they think of the fleeting pleasure on the faces of their grandparents when they were young?

Fate

Let me be a man of wisdom
And investigate the issues of fate
What is the fate of the onlooker?
That Time has yet to decide
But the Omnipotent One
Has decreed our path
Time is a sense of Man
Fate is concealed in the mists
Of which God alone has the knowledge

The Discovery in the Dark

- My Path to Realization -

From beneath the phantom’s veil
The clouds passes and bursts
Dew of the morning is dried
When the yawning of the sun
Is repressed and cloven
Lead us, Allah, from darkness to light
Lead these lambs to green pastures

But now I’ve to walk on this path
When I discovered the Word in the dark
Lo! It lay in my heart under serene armour
The Qur’an is what’s in the wind
That inspires those who think
Not a mortal rhyme in a time
All that is extended by mankind isn’t true
How I wooed the flowers and friends
To please them despite my solitude!

When the world screeched on my back
I had to leave the heartbreaking past
I prayed in the dark, holding the spirit within
To my bosom; teardrops in my eyes
My voice was Silence of the meek
Still a child, and wild in the feet
I first read on the Greek Myths
And puzzled saints who thought they knew
But all their philosophy on life and death
Could not seduce a young critical mind
Of mine for I was simply on the hunt for Truth

Born into this universe of subliminal beauty
How painless it is to love Allah
And how agonizing to be shut into a trap
Of pleasures and bars and criss-cross guitars

When I’m clothed in silk
And pushed into darkness:
This is the trap
When I’m slumbering on flowers
And down pours the rain:
This is the trap
When I taste the honey
And it stings my heart:
This is the trap

As I sat in the blue, bitter and unhappy
About the things I related to you
I opened this book that had the Mark of Heaven
Ah, the words of Allah, no vanguard or saint
But the Lord of the Worlds, Who fashioned
The busy consciousness within me
Do I have to declare this love of Faith?
Yes, as the unspoken universe unfolds before me
Gently dragging me out of the dark

Q / (1 + exp(a (t – year)))

At work I am involved in the local implementation of a complex government-driven national computer programme. In my particular region, every surgery and health centre has been kitted out with the latest technology, delivering over 300 new PCs, 50 printers and 20 servers. The aim of the national programme is to connect thirty-thousand doctors to three hundred hospitals for the benefit of patients. The goal is to create an efficient patient-centred health service, wherein high quality information is shared effectively between different teams and organisations.

Without a doubt, these are all very admirable aspirations, but there is a question which keeps on recurring in my mind… “What happens when the oil runs out?”

I’m not being funny — although whenever I ask this question at work, I find myself the immediate target of mockery. “What, this computer runs on oil, does it?” a colleague asked me sarcastically, prompting those around us to snigger at my ridiculous statements. I am the irritating voice in the office who must always inject a historical or futuristic reference whenever some piece of technology is not working exactly as it should. I have the misfortune to sit beside the noisy, clunky photocopier and am thus the first recipient of the expletives when the paper jams again. “I hate this thing,” is a frequent refrain; “This Bloody Machine” another. As I sidle across to assist the huffing and puffing victims of copier fart, I cannot help asking — as I retrieve the crumpled rogue sheet from flap five — how we got by in the olden days, why everything is such a hurry. The last time I told a colleague who was lamenting how long it was taking for the machine to wake up from its power-saving slumber that at least waiting on a monk with a quill could have been worse, the “you’re an idiot” glare was useful confirmation that my “it’s not that bad” optimism is getting on everyone’s nerves. Still, whenever there is a problem with the computer network and patience begins to fray, I continue to ask what we are going to do when the oil runs out.

No, I’m not being funny. I’m serious. “What, this computer runs on oil, does it?”

Well yes, in a way. The American Chemical Society (http://acswebcontent.acs.org) estimates that the construction of a single 32MB DRAM chip uses 1.5kg of fossil fuels in addition to 32kg of water, while the production of one gram of microchips consumes 630g of fossil fuels. Most of the keyboard, mouse, CPU case and monitor is made from plastic, which is a polymer derived from oil. It is estimated that the construction of the average desktop computer consumes ten times its weight in fossil fuels, while the US Environmental Literacy Council (http://www.enviroliteracy.org) states that the energy used in producing ten computers is enough to produce a car, largely due to the purity and sophistication of materials required to produce microchips. All electrical devices make use of silver, copper, and/or platinum, each of which is extracted, transported, and fashioned using oil-powered machinery. The production of one ton of copper requires the equivalent of 17.8 barrels of oil, while the energy cost component of aluminium is twenty times higher. In other words, the production of computers is an extremely energy-intensive operation throughout the cycle.

Take yourself off to the website of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (http://www.peakoil.net) and sober up. While I am sure that everybody is aware that oil is finite resource, what this means hasn’t really hit home yet. Every time we hear that production is peaking we learn that a new oil field has been discovered and so we relax; it seems the oil will just run and run. Last time I was in Turkey I met a BP engineer heading off to Trabzon. My wife laughed: there’s no oil down there. “Oh yes there is,” he replied with a smile, on route to his connecting flight. Out on a rig in the Black Sea, off the northern Turkish coast, they are drilling for more black gold. Why don’t the scaremongers just quieten down? Probably because they are right. We don’t know when the oil will run dry — in 1956, Marion King Hubbert incorrectly forecasted that world oil production would peak at some point between 1993 and 2000 — but we can be certain that it will. Hubbert was correct in his prediction that US oil production would peak in the early 1970s.

Some reports now suggest that the peak of oil production — which coincides with 50% depletion of our oil endowment — has been superseded and we will therefore begin to see production levels drop my 3% each year. Thus oil production in 2020 is likely to be equal to that in 1980, although demand for oil will significantly outpace production due to population growth and more widespread industrialisation. As CEO of Halliburton in 1999, Dick Cheney stated that, “there will be an average of two-percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead, along with, conservatively, a three-percent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional 50 million barrels a day.” Andrew Gould, CEO of the oil services firm Schlumberger noted: “An accurate average decline rate is hard to estimate, but an overall figure of 8% is not an unreasonable assumption.”

Those who only consider the implications of a decline in the production of oil in light of our transportation and energy needs, must awake to the realisation that petrochemicals are actually key components in a vast array of applications, from the production of medicines to the distribution of water, and from the creation of plastics to the production of food. Indeed, in the case of the latter it is estimated that industrialised societies use 10 calories of fossil fuels to produce every 1 calorie of food eaten. In addition to the energy used in farming, transportation and packaging of the food we eat, oil is the building block of many related resources. Pesticides are made from oil, for example, while fertilizers are made from ammonia, which is derived from natural gas.

We are running, but where are we going? The growth in the popularity of consumer electronics in recent years has brought with it an acceptance of planned obsolescence and the perpetual upgrade, without any real appreciation of the implications. Last year’s status symbol was the Apple iPod, this year’s the Sony Walkman phone, next year’s the portable PlayStation? We move from hyper-threading chips to dual-core offerings within a matter of months. The traditional conservative approach towards electronic equipment (such as the Hi-Fi and TV) that anticipated longevity has largely been superseded by the idea that a product will need to be perpetually upgraded (mobile phones, computers, PDAs, MP3 players). Computers are vulnerable to this idea on two fronts: aging hardware and new versions of software. Indeed, the two link together in a perfect marriage: as computers get more powerful, so does the software, the next generation requiring ever greater hardware specifications. The result, unfortunately, is the creation of huge volumes of waste and consumption of limited resources. We know that much of this is unnecessary, but we just accept it as a fact of life. It is said that most of the consumer-level problems with computer software are not inherent in the technology. Rather, they are the consequences of user-hostile business models, which see the perpetual upgrade as its primary source of revenue.

But where are we heading? The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (http://www.millenniumassessment.org), which was drawn up by 1,300 researchers from 95 nations over four years, concluded that human activities threaten the Earth's ability to sustain future generations. The way in which society obtains its resources is said to have caused irreversible changes that are degrading the natural processes that support life on Earth, and it is believed that this will compromise efforts to address hunger, poverty and improve healthcare. Its authors say the pressure for resources has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth; fisheries and fresh water, for example, are now well beyond levels that can sustain current demands. Thus the report suggests that society must alter its consumption patterns and promote better education, new technologies and higher prices for exploiting ecosystems.

We can communicate across continents in an instant for free, sharing files, sounds and video at ease. We can calculate financial forecasts faster than ever before using metre-wide spreadsheets with thousands of entries. We can share our thoughts with strangers in far-off lands. Our Doctors can view digital X-Rays on their computer as soon as a fracture has been photographed in a hospital twenty miles away. Software logarithms can now identify cancers within a CAT scan without human intervention. Technology is shrinking the world and allegedly speeding life up. Ears plugged into the iPod, eyes fixed on the computer screen, we are racing onwards as never before. But where are we going and what are we doing? My question is serious: what will we do when the oil runs out?

Those who are studying peak oil are not speaking about the last drop, only the downward slope of the bell curve. When demand outstrips supply, they say, the economy as we know it will probably collapse. And what will we do when that happens? How will we live?

Slow down. Learn how to live. Learn how to survive as those before us did. As another writer noted recently, some of us don’t know how determine when it is time to pray because we have become dependent on computer generated timetables. Some of us don’t know how to determine whether Ramadan has arrived because we are dependent on someone telling us on the phone. We have entered the on-demand age of e-Government, e-Banking, e-Commerce and e-Support, and we are apparently more connected than ever before. But do we know how to cook “real food”, or grow some vegetables, or conserve water and heat? Do we know how to conduct business? Do we know how to survive in the post-oil age?

It is possible that this apocalyptic vision is an exaggeration of our future reality – a dystrophic apparition more akin to that old film entitled Mad Max. I have read that scientist are developing new plastics based on polymers derived from corn and that theoretically circuit boards could be printed on sheets of lasagne pasta. Perhaps by the time oil is seriously on the decline, we will have developed efficient renewable sources of energy, or Mr Blair’s nuclear programme will be well under way. Perhaps today’s silicon based computer chips will have been replaced by organic processors. Perhaps the future will be rosy and my concern is misplaced. Perhaps.

But as we march onwards at an ever increasing pace, and I am invited to upgrade my computer and mobile telephone, to buy an MP3 player and download the latest version of Microsoft Windows, that question just returns. Our resources are finite: about this there can be no doubt. Isn’t it better that we slow down and question where we’re going? That we ask now, before it is too late? I think I can get by without an iPod. What about you?

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