Oil prices have risen to more than $50 a barrel with no indication the price will soon go down. At the same time, with demand continuing to surge, oil producers are finding themselves unable to cope. What conclusion can be drawn from this situation? The inescapable one is that all the projections, expectations, studies, analyses and conclusions reached by the so-called experts and specialists were all wrong. Not only that, those experts and specialists have proven themselves to be ignorant of the very situation they claimed to understand. Facts on the ground have told everything.
Not long ago, television and radio talk shows as well as newspaper columns never stopped telling us that the economies of oil producing countries were heading for a bleak future with oil prices expected to slide to $5 a barrel. The experts predicted that with the world market being flooded, no one would buy oil any longer and with the cost of producing a barrel far exceeding its price in the market, the oil producers would soon join the ranks of impoverished countries.
And we believed it all; we swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Our main problem remains that we believe whatever those self-styled experts and specialists tell us and forget what our religion teaches us — that everything rests with Almighty God, that to Him alone belong the secrets of the heavens and the earth and that to Him alone everything returns.
The expert analyses, projections and conclusions have proved to be not only amateur guesswork but inaccurate and incorrect information. The experts told us that the oil producers, especially the Gulf states, would go bankrupt and their economies collapse. They told us the Gulf currencies and their stock and real estate markets would crash, sending their economies into an unavoidable downward spiral and transforming their rich into poor.
The opposite in fact happened and the Gulf economies remained healthy and are heading for record growth rates. Some among us unfortunately regularly believed these false projections emanating from fortune-tellers and workers of black magic. They lived in constant fear that one day they would wake up one to find themselves new members of the club of the poor. They kept their money under their pillows, refusing to invest in anything, especially stocks and real estate lest a sudden crash wipe them out.
Now, they have realized that the lies they believed made them miss the opportunity of a lifetime. It was a golden opportunity that brought sudden wealth to those who disregarded all the false predictions.
The problem with those losers is that they mocked Shariah scholars who kept advising people not to become pessimists and to depend on Almighty God alone. Now they have learned where the truth lies.
