Dreams and Prophethood
Let us now turn to the phenomenon of dreams and their relation
to the institution of prophethood.
Ibn Sa’ad quotes Aisha (ra) who said:
“The beginning of the revelations to the Apostle of Allah sallalahu ‘alaihi wa sallam
was in the form of true dreams. He did
not have a dream but it came to him like daybreak. She said: He remained in this condition as
long as Allah Most High willed. He loved solitude. Nothing was dearer to him.” 19
Narrated ‘Aisha:
The commencement of the Divine Inspiration to Allah’s Apostle 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. He used to go in seclusion in (the cave of) Hira where he used to
worship(Allah) continuously for many (days and) nights. He used to take with
him the food for that (stay) and then
come back to (his wife) Khadija to take more food for another period, till
suddenly the Truth descended upon him while he was in the cave of Hira. The
angel came to him in it and asked him to read. The Prophet replied, “I do not
know how to read.” (The Prophet added), “The angel caught me (forcefully) and
pressed me so hard that I could not bear it anymore. He then released me and
again asked me to read, and I replied, I do not know how to read, whereupon he
caught me again and pressed me a second time ‘till I could not bear it anymore.
He then released me and asked me again to read, but again I replied, I do not
know how to read (or, what shall I read?).
Thereupon he caught me for the third time and pressed me and then released me
and said, Read: In the Name of your Lord, Who has created (all that exists).
Has created man from a clot. Read and Your Lord is Most Generous who has taught
(man) the use of the pen, taught man what he did knew not. (Qur’an: al-‘Alaq:-96:1-5)”
(Bukhari)
It would appear from the experience of the Prophet sallalahu ‘alaihi wa sallam
himself that true and good dreams, when they occur continuously, are indicative
of the realization of a stage of spiritual growth and development. That appears to be the stage, for the
believers, which witnesses success in the struggle to achieve inner purity (tazkiyah).
It is only when that stage has been reached that the true process of inner
growth can commence. That stage has been achieved when dreams are invariably
good or true. The believers should
ponder over the remark of Aisha (ra) : “The commencement of the Divine
Inspiration to Allah’s Apostle 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.”
It should now be possible for us to understand the true
importance of the statement of the Prophet sallalahu
‘alaihi wa sallam that
good and true dreams are a part of Prophethood:
Narrated Anas bin Malik:
Allah’s Apostle said, “A good dream of a righteous person (which
comes true) is one of forty-six parts of prophethood.”
(Bukhari)
The Prophet sallalahu
‘alaihi wa sallam, himself, attached such importance to
dreams, during his own lifetime, that he warned that: those who did not
believe in dreams did not possess iman (faith). We are told that every morning, after the
morning prayer, he would enquire from those who had performed the prayers as to
whether anyone “had seen anything last night?”:
“Abu Hurairah reported: When the Apostle of Allah finished his
morning prayer he used to ask whether anyone had seen a dream, and used to
say: After me there would be nothing
left of prophethood except good dreams.”
(Muwatta, Imam Malick)
After the construction of the masjid in Madina the search
began for an appropriate way of calling the faithful to prayer. A companion approached the Prophet sallalahu ‘alaihi wa sallam
and informed him that he had a dream of the azan (call to prayer). The
Prophet sallalahu ‘alaihi wa sallam immediately
recognized it as a dream from Allah Most
High and decided to adopt the azan as the Muslim call to prayer:
“When the Apostle first came, the people gathered to him for
prayer at the appointed times without being summoned. At first the apostle thought of using a
trumpet like that of the Jews who used it to summon to prayer. Afterwards he disliked the idea and ordered a
clapper to be made, so it was duly fashioned to be beaten when the Muslims
should pray.
Meanwhile ‘Abdullah b.
Zayd b. Tha‘laba b. ‘Abdu Rabbihi, brother of al-Harith, heard
a voice in a dream, and came to the apostle saying: A phantom visited me in the
night. There passed by me a man wearing
two green garments carrying a clapper in his hand, and I asked him to sell it
to me. When he asked me what I wanted it
for I told him that it was to summon people to prayer, whereupon he offered to
show me a better way: it was to say thrice: “Allahu Akbar. I bear witness that there is no God but Allah
I bear witness that Muhammad is the Apostle of Allah. Come to prayer. Come to prayer. Come to divine service. Come to divine service. Allahu Akbar.
Allahu Akbar. There is no God but
Allah”. When the Apostle was told of this he said that it was a true vision if God
so willed it, and that he should go with Bilal and communicate it to him so that
he might call to prayer thus, for he had a more penetrating voice. When Bilal acted as muezzin ‘Umar heard him in
the house and came to the Apostle dragging his cloak on the ground and saying
that he had seen precisely the same vision.
The apostle said: ‘Allah be praised for that! 20
It would appear that all through the spiritual history of man,
good and true dreams have been accepted as a criterion for recognizing
spiritual mobilization and for measuring spiritual growth and development. In addition,
dreams have been the easiest and most readily available vehicle through which
access to the transcendental dimension of existence (al-ghaib) could be
effected. As such, the phenomenon of dreams must be examined with greater
attention and with more importance than now obtains in this age in which
materialism has impacted even on Islamic religious thought. Otherwise the spiritual dimension of human
personality will be incapable of resisting
the negative impact which today’s materialism (and its Muslim child, scientific
‘Protestant’ Islam) is making on the authentic religious way of life.
The only possible way that one can explain the phenomenon of a
true dream, such as the fire which destroyed my neighbor's house, is that events
exist before they occur. In other
words, the process of creation of an event, which commences with the divine
command ‘be!’, is one which passes through various stages until it culminates
as an actual occurrence. It is when that event
is intercepted on its way to occurrence that a true dream occurs. Perhaps the manner in which it reaches the
sleeping person is that it is transmitted by way of the angel of dreams named Siddiqun.
21
This explanation seems to be one which has very deep roots in
the popular consciousness – for even those who have no involvement in the
religious way of life, and may even be atheists, are extremely susceptible to
this phenomena and to its interpretation when it pertains to such events as
horse racing, casino gambling, betting in lotteries etc.
Perhaps the most important analysis we make in this book is the
claim that a true dream can only be explained if one accepts that reality is
essentially transcendental (or spiritual).
It is spiritual ‘substance’ which emerges in material ‘form’ in every thing
that exists, and every thing that occurs!
All that appears in material ‘form’ were so ‘fashioned’ by Allah Most
High that they might function as symbols (ayaat) which would lead to,
and reveal, their spiritual ‘substance’. If the material is recognized as
‘real’ then the spiritual will reveal itself as ‘ideal’.
And so, the event seen in a true dream would be an event created
by Allah Most High which then first
exists only at the dimension of spiritual ‘substance’. It subsequently emerges as material ‘form’,
and the dream becomes a ‘true’ dream.
The Sufi epistemology locates knowledge at the dimension of ‘substance’
and insists that material ‘form’ must first be penetrated before spiritual
‘substance’ can be discovered. Iqbal has
made the acute observation that “it is the mysterious touch of the ideal
that animates and sustains the real, and through it alone we can discover and
affirm the ideal.”22
Sufi epistemology further insists that the act of seeing
must extend beyond observation, and beyond enquiry through sense-perception.
Iqbal argues that a complete vision of Reality necessitates that
sense-perception be supplemented by the perception of what the Qur’an describes
as Fuad or Qalb, i.e., heart.
He quotes the Qur’an in this respect:
“God hath made everything which He hath created most good; and
began the creation of man with clay; then ordained his progeny from germs of
life, from sorry water; then shaped him, and breathed of His spirit unto him,
and gave you hearing and seeing and heart: what little thanks do ye return?”
(Qur’an:
al-Sajda:32:7-9)
and goes on to argue the case as follows:
“The ‘heart’ is a kind of inner intuition or insight which, in
the beautiful words of Rumi, feeds on the rays of the sun and brings us into
contact with aspects of Reality other than those open to sense-perception. (The
bodily sense eats the food of darkness; The spiritual sense feeds from the sun;
- Rumi). It is, according to the Qur’an, something which ‘sees’, and its
reports, if properly interpreted, are never false. (Qur’an: al-Najm:-53:11-2).
We must not, however, regard it as a mysterious special faculty;
it is, rather, a mode of dealing with reality in which sensation, in the physiological
sense of the word, does not play any part.
(Qur’an: al-Hajj:-22:46). Yet the
vista of experience thus opened to us is as real and concrete as any other
experience. To describe it as psychic,
mystical or supernatural does not detract from its value as experience.” 23
When the heart sees, it sees with a nur (‘light’) which
comes from Allah Most High which, in the final analysis, permits things to be
seen as they ‘are’ (rather than as they merely ‘appear’ to be). Indeed the
Prophet sallalahu ‘alaihi wa sallam
warned mankind to fear the firasa
(intuitive knowledge, acumen, power of discernment) of the mu’min (one
possessed of faith) because he sees with the nur (light) of Allah Most High. (Tirmidhi)
Thus the Sufi epistemology is one which links ‘knowledge’ and
the act of ‘knowing’ with nur (light) from Allah Most High. It directs attention to the statement in the Qur’an
that Allah Most High is the nur (light) of the heavens and the earth (Qur’an:
al-Nur:-24:35), and when Allah Most High sent down the Qur’an He
also sent a nur (light) with it (i.e., He sent light with the Qur’an)
(Qur’an: al-Maida:-5:15).
The Qur’an declares:
“O mankind! Verily there has come to you a burhan (convincing
proof, i.e., the Qur’an) from your Lord, and We have (also) sent to you a nur
(light) which is plain and manifest.”
(Qur’an: al-Nisa:-4:174)
“O you who believe! Fear Allah and believe in His Messenger, and He will grant you doubly out of His mercy, and He will provide for you a nur (light) by which you shall walk (through the world) . . .”
(Qur’an: al-Hadeed:-57:28)
“Believe, therefore, in Allah and His Messenger, and in the nur
(light) which We have sent down.”
(Qur’an: al-Taghabun:-64:8)
The Qur’an further declares of the believers who:
“believe in him (i.e., the Prophet), and to honor and help him,
and to follow the nur (light) which was sent down with him, that they will be
successful.”
(Qur’an: al-’Araf:-7:157)
It is only with that nur (light) that one can truly
‘see’:
“ . . . And Allah guides whomsoever He wills to His light . .
.”
(Qur’an: al-Nur:24:35)
“ . . . (and) for any to whom Allah gives not light (for such)
there is no light.”
(Qur’an: al-Nur:24:40)
It is only with that light that an Iqbal is produced. Iqbal is
the living proof of the validity of the Sufi epistemology. The graduates of the
classical education of modern scientific ‘Protestant’ Islam in today’s Al-Azhar
University or Darul ‘Uloom Deoband etc. can never be the equal of an Iqbal. Nor can modern secular education ever
produce scholarship who can possibly be the equal of the scholarship which
emerges from authentic Islamic education.
The Qur’an asks rhetorically:
“. . . Are the blind equal with those who see? Or the depths of darkness equal to light. . .?”
(Qur’an: al-Ra’ad: 13:16)
and again:
“Is one whose heart Allah has opened to Islam so that he is (blessed with) a light from his lord, (equal
to one who is without such)?”
(Qur’an: al-Zumar:-39:32)
and finally:
“Can he who was dead, to whom We gave life, and a nur (light)
whereby he can walk amongst men, be like him who is in the depths of darkness
from which he can never come out?”
(Qur’an: al-An’am:-6:122)
The Qur’an then returns to answer the question:
“The blind and the seeing are not alike; nor the depths of
darkness and the light.”
(Qur’an: al-Fatir:-35:19-20)
Our study of the phenomenon of true dreams and of their link
with prophethood has led us to the Sufi epistemology which locates
knowledge in the dynamic and creative movement of the mind from material ‘form’
(al-Zahir) to spiritual ‘substance’ (al-Haqiqa). Nowhere is this epistemology
more necessary that in the study of the Qur’an itself. Dr. Ansari has made the extremely important observation concerning the
existence of two levels of understanding the Qur’an, viz., the level of
religious consciousness, which is embraced by unperverted human common sense,
and the level of theoretic consciousness, which necessitates probe and research
below the surface of the Qur’anic text. 24
The understanding of the Qur’an at the level of religious
consciousness requires the use of the Sufi epistemology. And it is only at the level of religious
consciousness that both the Qur’an and Reality (haqiqah) can be
grasped as a unity and as an integrated whole. The logical rational theoretic
consciousness is incapable of doing that.
“The logical consciousness”, says, Iqbal, “is incapable of
seeing multiplicity as a coherent universe.”
The reason for this is because “it’s only method is
generalization based on resemblances . . .” 25
When, on the other hand,
says Dr. Ansari, the believer pursuing the Islamic religious quest arrives at
the stage of al-Haqiqah then:
“Allah Most High establishes a light in that
servant. The light illumines all the
dimensions of his consciousness to the extent that he lives and moves only
under the impact of that light (Qur’an: al-An’am:-6:122), and not through his
desire (Qur’an: al-Nazi’at:-79:40). At
that level of experience his ego transcends, in terms of its approach to the
reality of existence, the phenomenological level of ‘diversity’ and becomes
focused in the realm of ‘unity’, - ‘unity’ being the haqiqah (reality) of
existence.” 26
I have been stunned by my discovery that contemporary scientific
‘Protestant’ Islam, which relishes in demonizing even authentic Sufism with
charges of bid’ah (innovations), is itself incapable of understanding
the subjects of riba or dreams.
Nor is it at all possible for scientific ‘Protestant’ Islam to
penetrate Suratul Kahf of the Qur’an. As a consequence scientific
‘Protestant’ Islam cannot understand the modern age. This is the most likely reason for the successful
embrace and imprisonment of Saudi Arabia, and with it the haramain, by
the modern dominant godless western civilization! The so-called salafi wahhabis cannot
see!
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