Question:
May the peace and blessings of Allah rain endlessly upon Nabi Muhammad (saws), his family, and ummah. May the saintly ones find their stations raised continually.
I was wondering if Mawlana, or another person felt to be a wali-Allah, gives advice to someone in a dream, does this mean that the advice is truly given by that guide to follow in real life?
To give examples, a dream where Mawlana Shaykh Nazim is teaching that “kindness is the beginning of sainthood”, or that a certain person should “follow a diet where the only meat he eats is fish”…are these advices we should follow as well in our waking life as true guidance from our murshid, as we would if we heard it in his physical presence?
Thank you for your wise responses to this and all other inquiries.
Answer:
Shaytan cannot make himself pass for Mawlana Shaykh Nazim but the sleeper needs to be sure that he or she is seeing Mawlana. In addition, as for inspirations, if the message is about implementing a fard then its status is fard; if a sunnah then its status is sunnah; if something indifferent then it is mubah, as in eating fish; if something disliked then its status is disliked; and if something haram then its status is haram. I.e. the legal status of the content of a dream is strictly in conformity with the legal status of the same thing if it were heard while awake. A dream can never be used to legislate something unheard of for oneself, or to make a haram halal and vice-versa.
Imam al-Nawawi said in Sharh Sahih Muslim in commentary of the hadith “the believer’s dream is one forty-sixth of prophecy”:
Dreams are not definitive, nor can an established sunnah be abrogated because of them, nor a previously unestablished sunnah be established, by consensus of the scholars. Agreement was reported to the effect that nothing of what has been decided by the Law can be changed because of what the sleeper saw. What we mention here does not contradict the saying of the Prophet upon him blessings and peace: “Whoever sees me in vision or dream sees me truly.” For the meaning of this hadith is that the dreamer’s vision is true and not from the fantasies of dreams nor the delusions of the devil. However, it is not permissible to establish a legal ruling on the basis of this dream, because the state of sleep is not a state of accuracy and verification for whatever the dreamer is seeing. The scholars all agree that among the conditions necessary for accepting one’s narration or legal testimony is that he be awake, not somnolent, nor poor in his memorization, nor prone to making many mistakes, nor lacking accuracy. A sleeper does not meet these criteria. Therefore his narration is not accepted because he lacks accuracy. This all pertains to a dream that contains a ruling that contravenes what those in authority ruly by. As for seeing the Prophet upon him blessings and peace ordering him something which is recommended, or forbidding him something which is forbidden, or directing him to do something beneficial, there is no disagreement that it is desirable that he go ahead and act according to his dream. For here the ruling does not depend on the dream but on what has been decided from the principles at hand, and Allah knows best.
Hajj Gibril Haddad
