Dream interpretation today — reading the vision or selling illusions

Tareq al-Suwaidan gave an episode of his programme Al-Wasatiyya on the Al-Resalah channel to dream interpretation, under the title "Dream interpretation: reading the vision, or selling illusions?" ⁵ He said the phenomenon is old but has spread widely of late, to the point of having its own satellite channels, specialised programmes and newspaper pages. ⁶ He set the episode's questions: why the obsession, who its customers are and whether women are the largest share, what separates a vision from a dream, whether dreams have a scientific explanation, whether an interpreter has a gift or a learnable science, and what conditions an interpreter must meet. ^{6 7 8} He said visions are mentioned in the Qur'an and the Sunna, but their scale today is enormous, so he wanted to ground the subject in the sharia and in science and ask whether it is a discipline with foundations or illusion and charlatanry. ⁹

He admitted he does not usually like to speak on such matters because they are not his field, but the phenomenon had grown so wide that it had to be grounded and kept within its limits. ¹⁰

• Mr Hamid, a dream interpreter from Riyadh, who runs a website called "Manamat", a direct telephone line for dream interpretation, and has a book in press; his own field is computing, interpretation has been his hobby since childhood, and he gives it an hour or two a day although people call around the clock. ^{11 12 13} (His family name occurs once in the recording, unclearly, and is not given here.)
• Dr Muhammad al-Mahdi, professor of psychiatry, author of a book on sleep and dreams in medicine and the Qur'an; the presenter mentioned that his own son is a psychiatrist. ¹⁴
• Dr Sami al-Majid, professor of fiqh at the Faculty of Sharia of Imam Muhammad ibn Saud University, who has written articles criticising the dream-interpretation phenomenon in what he called positive criticism. ¹⁵
• Dr Rajab, counsellor in the shar'i section of the IslamOnline website. ¹⁶

The presenter asked the studio's young people how often they had sought interpretation of their dreams, and said he himself had never once gone to a dream interpreter. ^{17 18} 33% said never, 39% a little and 28% often. ¹ One young man said someone in his family always interprets dreams and never says "I don't know", hitting sometimes and missing sometimes; a young woman said she turns to a book attributed to Ibn Sirin out of curiosity and does not build her life on it. ^{19 20 21 22}

In the second poll he asked whether there are trustworthy or gifted interpreters: 27% trust none of them, 33% think they exist but are rare, 33% see a small number, and 7% think many people can interpret. ^{23 24} In the third he asked about famous interpreters: 46% said they are mostly wrong, 27% a little wrong, and 27% mostly right. ^{2 25} These are the votes of that episode's studio audience.

Mr Hamid said the phenomenon is old and new, growing with wars and economic conditions, in poverty and in wealth alike, and estimated that women are about 90% of those who ask, being in his view freer of time and more emotional. ^{26 27} He said the educated ask more, including people in medicine and computing, that those who ask obsessively are few, and that the interpreter's duty is to counsel them. ^{27 28 29} Dr al-Mahdi explained women's interest by greater suggestibility and free time, and said that the truly educated and truly cultured do not pursue the phenomenon to the point of obsession; it is the half-educated and the haphazardly cultured who do. ^{30 31 15}

Mr Hamid set out what he sees as a division found in the hadith: a vision from God, a vision from Satan, and the self's own talk; the vision from God is, in his account, a glad tiding, a warning or news of something to come, and may come to a believer or a non-believer. ^{32 33 34} The presenter pointed out that the king of Egypt and the two prisoners in the story of Yusuf were not believers, yet their visions came true. ³⁵ Hamid said that what terrifies comes from Satan, that "jumbled dreams" (adghath) are mixed dreams, partly clear and partly not, and that the self's talk is what occupies a person during the day. ^{36 37}

Dr al-Mahdi said he found no difference between dream and vision in language or in technical usage, both being what the sleeper perceives, and that the true visions of non-believers in the Qur'an were connected with a prophet. ^{38 39} Dr al-Majid said that whenever the Qur'an mentions "dreams" it calls them jumbled, and whenever it mentions a vision it mentions interpretation with it. ^{40 41}

The presenter gave his own view: after study, shar'i reflection and reading he settled on the idea that a vision is a dream that recurs, and that a non-recurring dream of a non-prophet carries no weight for him; he found support in the Torah's account that the king of Egypt saw his vision repeatedly. ^{42 43 44} Dr al-Mahdi objected that the "recurring dream" is studied in psychology and recurs with lasting fears, an unmet desire or an unresolved conflict. ^{45 46 43}

Dr al-Mahdi said dreams have three sources: bodily influences, internal or external, such as a heavy meal pressing on the diaphragm and producing a nightmare, or a stone under a sleeper's side producing a dream of being stabbed; the self's own talk; and messages from the unseen, from angels or devils. He said Muslim scholars called the first "humours" and the second "the self's talk". ^{47 48 49 50}

He said dreaming has been studied since the invention of the electroencephalograph, and that people dream for 20 to 25% of their sleeping time whether they remember it or not: dreaming sleep is all dreams, coloured and detailed, while deep sleep is about half dreams, flashes in black and white that are easily forgotten; the first dreaming phase comes after about ninety minutes, and the phases lengthen towards the end of the night. These are his figures. ^{48 51 52 53 54} He said the dream's function is to discharge and regulate the emotions accumulated during the day, and that it is closely tied to memory and learning, comparing this to a library whose staff pile up incoming books during opening hours and shelve them after closing. ^{55 56 57} He said a "predictive" dream that comes true may be a calculation the brain makes in the stillness of the night, like a computer, and need not be a true vision. ^{58 59}

He held that dream interpretation is not a science, and that the scale of the phenomenon is a kind of escape from real achievement into foggy corridors. ⁶⁰ He ranked degrees of knowledge from impression to observation, hypothesis, theory and scientific fact, and said most dream interpretation sits at impression and observation, because it lacks validity and reliability: different interpreters do not interpret the same dream the same way. ^{61 62 63} He illustrated how symbols vary with the dog, a symbol of loyalty in one culture and of aggression in another, and the snake, a symbol of the sacred in one culture and of malice in another. ^{64 65}

Dr Sami al-Majid held that the phenomenon in its present form is negative, pointing to illiteracy in this area and weak shar'i and scholarly grounding; that the many pretenders gave people an outlet for their dreams; and that scholars had not done enough to regulate it. ^{66 67 68} But he said interpretation is not rejected by the sharia. The presenter asked: if Abu Bakr tried to interpret in the Prophet ﷺ's presence and was partly right and partly wrong, how can anyone else be allowed? He answered that the presence of error does not mean interpretation is forbidden to non-prophets, citing the practice of the Companions and the early generations. ^{68 69 70} He said prophets' visions are revelation to be acted upon, so no analogy can be drawn from them, and that the hadith saying nothing of prophecy remains except glad tidings shows that sound visions need interpretation, either by the dreamer if the vision is plain or by someone skilled. ^{71 72 16}

He said interpretation requires a natural readiness, a gift and insight, and then rules; it is not an acquired science that anyone can study and master, which is why many great scholars were never known for it while some became famous for it rather than for fiqh. ^{73 74} He said he knew of no shar'i text making interpretation an aim of the sharia or even recommended, that one who can interpret and declines is not concealing knowledge, and that the sharia narrowed the room for manipulators by guiding the dreamer to tell only what he likes. ^{59 75 76}

Dr Rajab said that when IslamOnline opened its fatwa service about ten years earlier, it found that a very large number of the questions were requests to interpret dreams, because people assume a sharia scholar knows everything; so they closed that door completely, since it is an escape from reality and the legal theorists agree that visions are not a source of legislation. ^{77 78 79} He held that grand visions, such as visions of the Mahdi, surface in severe crises and make people wait for victory from outside rather than from within, and that interpreting remotely by television, internet or telephone is extremely dangerous, since Yusuf interpreted through living among those he interpreted for. ^{80 81 82} He said there is no measure to tell a gifted interpreter from a pretender, as a diploma tells a physician from others. ^{83 84}

Mr Hamid said interpretation begins as a gift, which its owner discovers when he tries interpreting as a child and succeeds several times; it then needs foundations drawn from the Qur'an, the hadith, the Arabic language and proverbs, and the interpreter should have a religious background and uprightness and be known for good counsel. ^{85 86 87} He said he takes no fee for interpreting and would refuse one if offered. ⁸⁸ He said interpreters come in grades: a strong one quickly tells a vision from the effect of a heavy supper or from a psychological disorder. ⁸⁹

Asked how many of a hundred dreams he would interpret, he first said about twenty, declining eighty, then said he might interpret all of them after deferring. ^{90 91} The presenter put to him a saying he attributed to Ibn Sirin: that if given a hundred visions he would not interpret one of them, that he advised the questioner to fear God and do good while awake, and that he answered by conjecture; and he remarked that the interpreters on television never turn a dream away, as if they were cleverer than Ibn Sirin. ^{91 92 93 94} These are sayings as the presenter quoted them in the episode; they have not yet been checked against their source. He also quoted a saying he attributed to Malik, objecting to interpreting an evil vision as good because the vision is part of prophecy. ⁹⁵

The presenter said any shrewd person can "assemble" an interpretation from the questioner's circumstances, for example telling a man who has not mentioned a wife that he will marry. ⁹⁶ He told of an interpreter who told a man who dreamed of fire under his safe that he would find treasure; when he dreamed of fire again he found a snake, and the interpreter said the first dream was in winter, so fire meant warmth, and the second in summer, so it meant burning: an example, he said, of how an interpreter can play with the same symbol. ^{65 97}

The presenter asked about the book attributed to Ibn Sirin. Dr al-Majid said he did not know that Ibn Sirin wrote it and that no written work is known from him at all; Dr al-Mahdi said there are many doubts about its attribution, that the prevailing view among those who studied it is that some of it may be his and the rest was added and ascribed to him, and that it is nonetheless almost the only reference for dream interpretation and not strong enough to found a science on. ^{74 98 61} The presenter said he had read this book, the books of interpretation and the books criticising it, that most scholars believe Ibn Sirin did not write it, and that whoever compiled it may have gathered some of his interpretations and put it under his name. ^{99 64} The fiqh of visions and their etiquette has its own entry: The vision in fiqh.

The presenter said everyone agrees that no shar'i ruling is built on dreams: someone who dreams that he must perform a particular act of worship is not thereby obliged to do it. ³ Dr Rajab held that someone who sees a glad tiding has no need to go to an interpreter, since what will happen will happen and interpretation changes nothing in reality. ¹⁰⁰ He added that an interpreter who answers for hours on end, giving every dream a positive reading, keeps people living in illusions, and that scholars said whoever abandons "I do not know" is struck in a mortal place. ^{101 90}

Dr al-Majid advised anyone looking for an interpreter of three things: visions are no source of legislation nor of preference between scholars' views; interpreters err and hit, the matter is conjectural and pretenders enter it; and visions are of three kinds, so many possibilities apply. He said the Prophet's guidance that the dreamer should tell only what he likes, and only to those who love him, narrows the room for manipulators. ^{102 103 104} Dr al-Mahdi closed by calling on the umma to attend to the real, witnessed world and to study sleep and dreams physiologically and psychologically instead of drowning in conjecture. ^{105 106}

The presenter thanked Mr Hamid for his shar'i commitment and for taking no fee. ¹⁰⁷ He called on the umma to put its effort into improving reality and solving its problems: someone with a problem, even one seen in a dream, should ask about its causes, its solutions and the best alternative, and leave aside this unseen matter on which no action is built, for if the vision is true it will happen whether interpreted or not. ¹⁰⁸ He addressed young women in particular, since women are the largest audience, urging them to put more effort into developing their skills and knowledge. ¹⁰⁹ He said most interpreters have made it a profession, and quoted Abd al-Rahman al-Sudais describing what goes on in it as "daggers of illusion and superstition, and mines of charlatanry and sorcery". ¹¹⁰ He ended by saying the greatest effort should go not into dreams and their interpretation but into turning the umma's own dreams into reality, and that perhaps this is the middle way. ^{110 4}

The sleep and dream figures here are the speaker's figures in the episode, not medical information endorsed by the museum. The vote results are the opinions of that episode's studio audience, not representative surveys.