Did Muhammad Predict Oil? Nah.

Some Muslim apologists like to say Muhammad predicted oil when he supposedly said, “The earth will vomit its treasures.”

Here’s the actual hadith (Sahih Muslim 1013):

“The earth will vomit long pieces of its liver like columns of gold and silver. The murderer will say, ‘It was for this that I killed,’ the thief will say, ‘It was for this that my hands were cut off,’ and they’ll leave it, taking nothing from it.”

That’s not about oil. It literally mentions gold and silver, and ends with everyone walking away from the treasure. The point isn’t discovery of treasure, it’s about judgment. It’s a picture of people realizing how worthless greed was when the end comes. Is that really the picture we see in modern Arabia? No. Virtually nobody is walking away from the treasures of oil there.

And if we’re being honest, Muhammad’s “prophetic track record” doesn’t inspire confidence.

• He said, “This boy will not reach old age before the Hour comes.” (Sahih Muslim 2952) Um…that boy died over a thousand years ago.
• He said, “Women will increase in number and men will decrease in number so much so that fifty women will be looked after by one man.” (Sahih Bukhari 81)
  According to UN and WorldAtlas data, there are actually slightly more men than women worldwide — about 102 men for every 100 women. No massive gender imbalance has ever occurred.
• He said, “The Hour will not be established till the buttocks of the women of Daus move while going round Dhi-al-Khalasa.” (Sahih al-Bukhari 7116)
  But the idol Dhi-al-Khalasa disappeared over a millennium ago, and there are still no Dau women shaking their booty over this false god. Muslims shouldn’t hold their breath waiting for this one.

Muhammad didn’t foresee petroleum. The hadith isn’t scientific; most Muslim scholars just read it as moral for centuries. The “oil prophecy” is just a modern attempt to retrofit Islamic tradition for the fossil-fuel era.

Now compare that to the kind of prophecy we find in the Bible: specific, measurable, and verified by history.

Take Babylon, once the cultural and political center of the world. Ancient historians describe it in jaw-dropping detail. Herodotus wrote in the 5th century BC:

“The city stands on a broad plain and is an exact square… in magnificence there is no other city that approaches to it. It is surrounded by a wall fifty cubits in width and two hundred in height.” (Histories 1.178–179)

At its height, Babylon had millions of residents. Yet long before its fall, the Hebrew prophets predicted something unthinkable: total and permanent desolation.

The prophet Isaiah wrote around the 8th century BC:

“It will never be inhabited or lived in for all generations; no Arab will pitch his tent there; no shepherds will make their flocks lie down there. But wild animals will lie down there, and their houses will be full of howling creatures.” (Isaiah 13:20–22)

Jeremiah echoed the same centuries later:

“No stone shall be taken from you for a corner nor for a foundation, but you shall be a perpetual waste.” (Jeremiah 51:26)

Those are strong words. Not “Babylon will decline,” but “never again inhabited.” A bold, falsifiable claim.

By 150 BC, that’s exactly what happened. The once-great city emptied as people moved to Seleucia, twenty miles away. By the time of Strabo, writing in the first century BC, Babylon was already history:

“The great city is a great desert.” (Geography 16.1.5)

And over two thousand years later, that hasn’t changed. The Euphrates has shifted its course, eroding half the ruins and leaving behind swampy ground where no shepherd grazes sheep, which is exactly as Isaiah said.

Now contrast that with Nineveh, the former Assyrian capital. Zephaniah prophesied:

“Nineveh will be a desolation, a dry waste like the desert. Herds shall lie down in her midst… this is the exultant city that said, ‘I am, and there is no one else.’” (Zephaniah 2:13–15)

Today, Nineveh’s ruins sit across from modern Mosul, still grazed by flocks. The area’s largest mound, Kuyunjiq, even means “many sheep.” Now, if you swapped the names of Babylon and Nineveh in those prophecies, both would be wrong. But as written, both are dead on.

That’s the difference between real biblical prophecy and retrofitted Islamic apologetics. The Bible names cities, describes conditions, and history backs it up. The hadith about “vomiting treasure” is vague, symbolic, and reinterpreted centuries later to sound impressive.