The Dream in Islam

From Qur'anic Tradition to Jihadist Inspiration

Iain R. Edgar

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781785332227
• eBook ISBN: 9780857452368
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

The war in the Middle East is marked by a lack of cultural knowledge on the part of the western forces, and this book deals with another, widely ignored element of Islam—the role of dreams in everyday life. The practice of using night dreams to make important life decisions can be traced to Middle Eastern dream traditions and practices that preceded the emergence of Islam. In this study, the author explores some key aspects of Islamic dream theory and interpretation as well as the role and significance of night dreams for contemporary Muslims. In his analysis of the Islamic debates surrounding the role of "true" dreams in historical and contemporary Islamic prophecy, the author specifically addresses the significance of Al-Qaeda and Taliban dream practices and ideology. Dreams of "heaven," for example, are often instrumental in determining Jihadist suicidal action, and "heavenly" dreams are also evidenced within other contemporary human conflicts such as Israel–Palestine and Kosovo–Serbia. By exploring patterns of dreams within this context, a cross-cultural, psychological, and experiential understanding of the role and significance of such contemporary critical political and personal imagery can be achieved.

CHAPTER 1

Context and History

Dreams as Perceived Metaphysical and Divinatory Knowledge in Islam

Islam was both born in and gave birth to spiritual dreamtime. The Prophet Muhammed is said to have received ruyan (the plural of ruya) or “true dreams” from Allah for six months before the beginning of the revelation of the Qur’an. Bukhari, compiler of the best-known hadiths (sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammed) reports the words of Muhammed’s wife, Aisha, stating the “commencement of the divine inspiration was in the form of good righteous [true] dreams in his sleep. He never had a dream but that it came true like bright day light.” Indeed, it is said that 1/46th of the Qur’an was given to Muhammed in dreams (Bukhari 1979: 9:87).

Sara Sviri (1999: 252) sets out the key significance of the role of dreaming in medieval Islam: “While prophecy has ceased, Muhammad being the seal of the Prophets, messages of divine origin can still be communicated through dreams, albeit on a smaller scale than prophecy.” The same point is made in a hadith included in Bukhari (1979: 9:99): “Nothing is left of prophetism except Al-Mubashshirat,” which the Prophet explained as being “the true good dreams that convey glad tidings.” In mainstream Islam, then, there is no future revelation to come other than through the oneiocratic vehicle of true dreams. This gives such dreams a special charisma, power, and authority, and means that—for all Muslims, and particularly for those followers of Islam with a mystical facility—the dream is a potential pathway to the divine. In sleep or in deep contemplation, the mystically attuned have access to the noumenal, not just the surreal.

Indeed as Kinberg (2008: 30) writes, dreams have a special authority in Islam as they communicate truth from the next world (dar al-haq). They provide information as to the “relationship between acts in the present world and rewards in the next, helping to decipher the enigma of divine retribution.” Dreams offer knowledge for the community, “thus [becoming] the ultimate source for profound knowledge, authoritative enough to settle major communal disputes.” In Kinberg’s (2008: 32–33) work she particularly describes how renowned Muslims had dreams showing the primacy of the Qur’an in general over the hadiths. She also describes recorded dreams that proclaim the value of studying the Qur’an and singing it in a certain way, promising rewards for such people.

The Dreaming Self in Islam

In his Epistle on the Nature of Sleep and Dreams, the Islamic philosopher Ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (d. ca 866) argues that while asleep, the psyche is liberated from the senses and the sensible (al-hissiyya), and has direct access to “the form-creating faculty” (al-quwwa al-musawwira). In general, he states the truth (al-Haq) can only be discerned by the pure heart once the many veils covering it have been removed by spiritual and religious practice. In dreams, however, the liberated soul has potential access to the truth as the material world with its many desires is dormant.

Three kinds of dreams are recognized in Islam by the Prophet and by later dream writers such as Ibn Sirin: First come true spiritual dreams, ruyan inspired by God; second come dreams inspired by the devil; third are largely meaningless dreams from the nafs (Ego, or the lower self as described in Islamic psychology). This third kind of dream, hulm, could be caused by what had been eaten and by what was desired by the dreamer, so producing “a medley of dreams, muddled, jumbled dreams, mere hallucinations, and nightmares” (Gouda 1991: 4).

One of the most significant dream narratives in the history of the Prophet Muhammed is his night journey to the Al-Aqsa mosque site in Jerusalem (Laylat ul-isra wal miraj), in which he is believed to have seen the secrets of the cosmos. Within Islam there is a range of understandings as to the nature of this sacred journey. Many Muslims perceive it to be a divine dream or vision. Some Muslim sects view it as a concrete trip. Gouda (1991: 3) describes this journey as follows:

The vision in question was the ascension of the Holy Prophet: he was transported from the sacred Mosque (of Makkah) to the Al-Aqsa (the farthest) mosque (of Jerusalem) in a night and shown some of the signs of God. The Hadeeth gives details of this night journey wherein the Prophet was first transported to the seat of the earlier revelations in Jerusalem and then taken through the seven Heavens, even to the Sublime Throne, … and initiated into the spiritual mysteries of the human soul, struggling in space and time.

The role of inspirational dreams in the revelatory development of the nature of the Islamic religion was not, however, confined to Muhammed. For example, a companion of the Prophet, Abdullah Ibn Zayd, dreamt the Adhan, the five-times-daily Islamic call to prayer, at a time when Muhammed and his followers were seeking a way of defining their new faith.

The appearance of the Prophet Muhammed in a dream is of particular importance. The hadiths say that if the Prophet appears in a dream, then it is a true dream. For example, a hadith reported by Bukhari (1979: 9:104) relates that the Prophet said, “Whoever has seen me in a dream, then no doubt, he has seen me, for Satan cannot imitate my shape.” Nile Green (2003: 287–313) writes in his excellent overview of dreams and Islam, “Yet dreams of the Prophet have formed one of the earliest and most lasting expressions of Islamic piety … whilst dreams of the Prophet continue to be important to believers in this modern day.” Many people I spoke to confirmed this. For non-Muslims, the conviction that to dream of the Prophet is to have received a true guidance from God could be seen as opening a Pandora’s box. However, there are safeguards: The Prophet must be complete in his shape, and no true dream can advocate behavior contrary to the teachings of the Qur’an and the hadiths. An imam in Peshawar gave two examples of this from his own experience. The first involved a lawyer who went to him for help in interpreting a dream of the Prophet rolled up in a carpet. The Imam responded by saying, “You are a corrupt lawyer,” presumably as the body and energy of the Prophet were circumscribed. The second example was of a man who had a dream in which the Prophet had said he could drink alcohol. The imam asked him if he was a drinker, and the man said “Yes,” to which the imam replied that it was not the Prophet he had seen, but a self-justification for his drinking alcohol.

It would be incorrect to consider that only the appearance of the Prophet complete in a night dream should be taken as true. As we will see, many Muslims consider that other figures from the Islamic narrative are deemed as sacred figures. In Shia Islam, Ali and the Twelve Imams are so considered. Particularly striking in Shia Islam is the widespread practice of visiting Ali’s grave at Najaf to pray and to receive healing and guidance dreams (Sindawi 2008: 179–201). A follower of a shaykh will usually consider his appearance in their dreams to be true, as was the case among the Naqshbandi Sufis I studied in the United Kingdom. Also Kinberg (2008: 29) quotes a well-known tradition in Islamic dream lore, ascribed to the reported dream interpreter Ibn Sirin (see later) that the appearance of a dead person in a night dream should always be taken as a true dream. Their truthfulness is because they reside in the “world of truth” (dar al-haq).

Interestingly, auditory communication in dreams is given a higher status in Islamic dream theory than visual experiences. Kahana-Smilansky (2008: 116) explains this perception, writing about self-reflection and conversion in early Islamic autobiography. She elaborates on the tenth-century neo-Platonist philosopher, al-Sijistani, and his view

that knowledge received by auditory experience is more noble and exalted than visual experience, because verbal communication originates in the intellectual realm (the Primal One), while the visual imagery characterizes a lower level of consciousness.

She further asserts that this view of the primacy of auditory dream content was “commonly accepted in medieval Islam” (2008: 116). She quotes a Qur’anic verse (42:51) supporting this view, “The Prophet said:… ‘sound dreams are the speech of the Lord to the believer,’ though such speech is ‘not direct but from behind a screen’.” Overall, she stresses the role of historically recorded dreams as being decisive moments in the evolution of the individual after long periods of doubt, turmoil, and self-reflection.

The status of perceived sacred images in dreams is problematical. For example, in medieval Islam, an epistemological classification and understanding of a dream image involved an applied understanding of hierognosis. Hierognosis refers to the hierachical classification of the different orders of visionary knowledge displayed both in dreams and waking realities. Therefore dreams would be interpreted by reference to the status of religious imagery appearing in any dream. Hence, the appearance and message from the dream of the Angel Gabriel would have a higher potential truth value than a message received from the dream image of a local saint. Dream interpretation involved particularly the assessment of whether the dream image and its apparent meaning emanated from angels or demons (Meier 1966: 422); demons being able, in dreams, to manifest themselves as angels. The assessment of the dream image hinged on the context of the dream and particularly on whether the dream advocated moral or immoral choices, as angels would be unable to advocate “evil” as the concept of “evil” was understood in Islam.

Anyone, then, may have a true dream, though it is more likely to be experienced by a pious person, or by one who is perhaps going to become more pious on account of the dream. In this sense, Islamic dream theory and practice enshrines the possibility of every believer having true dreams, and indeed in Islamic eschatology, all believers will receive true dreams prior to the end time.

The sometimes lack of certainty as to whether a dream or a waking vision is being described (ruya can refer to either a true dream or vision) is in part due to the Sufi tradition within Islam in which the concept of the “imaginal world” is developed proposing a discernible world called alam al-mithal outside that of sensibility and intelligibility. This imaginal world is defined as “a world of autonomous forms and images” that is apprehended directly by the imaginative consciousness, through vision and dream particularly, and is held to validate suprasensible perception. This imaginal world should not be confused with an “imaginary” world, which refers to something unreal. Human access to this imaginal, or imaginative, realm is the essential and interactive way of divine transmission (Green: 2003: 287–313). Nile Green summarizes this imaginative pathway excellently drawing on the work of Ibn Arabi, one of the foremost Islamic philosophers of the alam al-mithal:

He [Ibn Arabi] in this way considered the use of the imagination to be the essential part of the journey into God, as the supreme human faculty capable of bridging the existential gap between human and divine knowledge … for Ibn Arabi regarded visions as, at the same instant, both descending from God to man as a private revelation and ascending from man to God as a creative visual encounter with the divine. Every original and creative act of man … was to be seen as a divine act of self-manifestation.

While it is beyond the scope of this book to address in depth the philosophical history of the construction and understanding of the self, it is important to conceptualize the Islamic perception of how the true dream is “downloaded” into the human mind. The concept of the alam al-Mithal, the imaginal, is crucial. Sviri (1999: 256) develops this idea with reference to the work of the Islamic philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111). Al-Ghazali, Sviri writes, bases his understanding of true dreams described in “the final part of the Ihya,” on the distinction between “the world of possession and (sense) perception” (alam al-mulk wash-shahada) and the “world of the angelic kingdom and the unseen” (alam al-malakut wal-ghayb). True dream visions emanate from this latter world of the angelic kingdom and the unseen and relate “to a mode of inner seeing (Mushahada) that is independent of the outer senses.” Further, Sviri writes:

A veridical dream vision, which is by definition a weak version of prophecy, may be granted to the pious and righteous during their lifetimes. Al-Ghazali explains that in a state of outer and inner purification, the veil covering the heart is lifted and a vision of the future is revealed to the heart’s eye. The heart, he explains, is like a mirror upon which forms (suwar) and meanings (ma’ani) are reflected. The source of these preserved forms and meanings is the (Preserved) Tablet (al-lauh al-mahfuz), the heavenly book that records all created and preordained phenomena from the beginning of creation to its end. In the process of dreaming, it is suggested, a double act of mirroring is taking place: the Tablet mirrors the incorporeal forms that exist in the unseen, and the unveiled heart, in contemplating the Tablet, mirrors the images reflected there. When the heart is not obscured by the veils of desires and sense perception, visions from the world of the unseen may thus flash and become reflected upon its clear surface. This is best achieved in sleep, since in sleep the senses lie dormant and do not distract the heart. …

Imagination, according to al-Ghazali, is the faculty which, through imitation (hikaya), represents the non-corporeal meanings reflected upon the heart by means of producing analogous images (based on sense perception), which are then stored in memory (hifz). These images require interpretation, since they are no longer the original forms and truths (haqa’iq), but only their symbolic representations. (1999: 256–57)

This summary by Sviri of al-Ghazali’s inner philosophical cosmology of transmission via the true dream of the unseen to the seen memory is complex and not verifiable within the Western empirical philosophical tradition. Moreover, it depends upon a mystical or symbolic Islamic perception of the heart as being not just an organ of the body but as being a mystical and receptive center of consciousness. For example, Said Nursi (see later in this chapter), the Turkish Islamic intellectual leader, writes extensively about the spiritual functions of the heart for “contemplation (mushahada) and spiritual witnessing (kashf)” (Kuspinar 2008: 126–32). It is impossible to understand the theory of Islamic true dreaming without understanding the importance of the heart (kalb) or inner heart (sirr) as an organ of spiritual and symbolic perception and engagement. Again, quoting Kuspinar, writing about the work of Said Nursi,

Nursi gives among others the example of the faculty of imagination, which, he says, works under the command of the heart and enables the heart to travel all around the world in joy, provided that the latter, that is, the heart, is fostered and flourished by the love (muhabba), contemplation (tafakkur), and remembrance (zikr) of God. (2008: 131)

This Islamic dual conception of the heart is central to understanding the nature of dreaming in Islam.

In his detailed study of dream interpretation in the early days of Islam, Lamoreaux (2002: 108) significantly asks the question as to whether dream interpretation is a duty of Muslims and whether it is sanctioned in the Qur’an. He concludes that while there are several significant dream narratives in the Qur’an, particularly the Joseph sura (Qur’an 12.6), there is nothing that enjoins Muslims to undertake dream interpretation as such. However, all the principle hadiths (i.e., Bukhari, Muslim) do contain a longer or shorter chapter on dream interpretation and its significance for the Prophet Muhammed, and to the practice of Islam itself. Lamoreaux shows that almost all the hadiths concur that the meaning of the phrase “glad tidings” in sura 10.64 refers to true dreams (2002: 110). The full phrase in question is “those who believe and fear (god) … they will have glad tidings [al-bushra] in the life of this world and in the next.” This hadith, based on understanding of the 10.64 Qur’anic verse, is part of the theological structure of Islamic dream interpretation and underpins the authority of the Islamic oneirocritical tradition.

Said Nursi

In the contemporary Nur community mainly based in Turkey—founded by Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, who died in 1960, and which numbers perhaps six million followers—some dreams are important. Said Nursi writes:

Experiencing them numerous times, true dreams became for me like decisive proofs at the degree of “absolute certainty” that Divine Determining encompasses all things. Yes, especially the last few years, these dreams have reached such a degree that it has become certain for me that the most significant events and unimportant dealings and even the most commonplace conversations I will have the following day are written and recorded before they occur, and that by dreaming of them the night before, I have read them not with my tongue but with my eyes. Not once, not a hundred times, but perhaps a thousand times, the things I have said in my dreams or the people I have dreamt of at night, although I had not thought of them at all, turned out exactly or with little interpretation the next day. It means that the most insignificant things are both recorded and written before they happen. That is to say, there is no chance or coincidence, events do not occur haphazardly, they are not without order. (Landau 2008: 153)

For Said, precognitive dreaming seems to have been highly developed and presumably influenced his philosophical reflections on the paradox of free will and determinism. Yet, Said Nursi affirms the value of the revelation of the Qur’an even over true dreams, thinking that even prophetic interpretation of dreams can be incomplete. An example from my readings of the Qur’an (Qur’an: 8.43) would, for instance, suggest that the dream of the Prophet Muhammed before the battle of Badr when he saw the Meccan army as smaller than it was in reality, so giving hope to Muhammed and his followers, shows that even a Prophet may not fully understand every aspect of a dream. Nursi seems to suggest (Landau 2008: 159) that dreams are like moonlight, which is the light of the reflected sun, while the Qur’an is the light of the sun itself. Nursi prefers to be “a servant of the Sun” and not a “lover of the night.” Dreams to Nursi can be “the snare of the saints” and he advises caution in interpreting dreams (Landau 2008: 159). Certainly though, Landau writes about Nursi’s powerful advisory dreams after his death, being seen by some of his followers, or followers to be (Landau 2008: 160).

Abu Ja’far al-Qayini and His Dreams of the Prophet Muhammed

There are myriad traditional and contemporary “sightings” of the Prophet Muhammed in night dreams recorded, some of which are reproduced in this book; perhaps one of the most remarkable is Lamoreaux’s (2008: 78–98) description and analysis of the dream conversations of Abu Ja’far al-Qayini and the Prophet Muhammed. The text is at least a thousand years old and contains the record of many conversations held in dreams between the Prophet and al-Qayini. Abu Jafar al-Qayini’s reported dream interviews were presented by Lamoreaux, and he was the first to translate the two remaining manuscripts that reported this dream interview. The manuscripts date from the sixteenth century CE and al-Qayini lived around 1000 CE. Appare...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface to the Paperback Edition
• Foreword. Anthropological Skepticism Encounters Dreamed Realities Following Fieldwork in Pakistan
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Context and History: Dreams as Perceived Metaphysical and Divinatory Knowledge in Islam
• Chapter 2. Methodology
• Chapter 3. Istikhara: Islamic Dream Incubation
• Chapter 4. Sufism and Dreaming
• Chapter 5. Militant Jihadist Dreaming in the Middle East and the United Kingdom
• Chapter 6. Dreams of Mullah Omar, Taliban Leader
• Chapter 7. Dream Interpretation Resources (Dictionaries) in Islam
• Chapter 8. A Comparison of Islamic Dream Theory and Western Psychological Theories of the Dream
• Conclusion
• Epilogue. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Imagination, Creativity, and Political Agency in the Inspirational Night Dream in Islam
• Glossary
• References
• Index