Captioning provided by MUHSEN (www.muhsen.org)
Some of the most vivid dreams that people will see
in their lives are usually of their loved ones
that are passed away.
And sometimes those dreams have really deep meanings
To a point that they scare the person that saw them
How do we come to terms with this?
Are we actually seeing the dead when we dream?
Assalatu 'Ala Al-Amwaati Yarhamkumu Allah
And I was thinking about, you know, which dream to narrate
and I remembered this incident
with Tufayl ibn Amr al-Dawsi radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
There are numerous dreams but I want to start with this one
for a reason.
Tufayl ibn Amr al-Dawsi
was of course famous in his interaction
with the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
He brought the tribe of Daws
to Islam, to accept Islam with the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
And he made Hijra
He migrated to Medina.
And when he migrated to Medina he had a man with him
from his tribe.
And when this man made the Hijra,
left everything behind,
made the Hijra with Tufayl
with the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
to Medina, the climate of Medina got to him,
he became ill and as he suffered his illness
he cut his fingers.
And when he cut his fingers the blood would flow
from his hands and eventually he passed away.
Now, this is a very interesting situation.
Tufayl says,
"I saw him in a dream and he was in a good state."
Meaning, you know, he looked to be from the people
of Al-Jannah.
But his fingers were still cut off.
Or he was, he had his hands wrapped and it was clear
that his fingers were still cut off.
So he said, "I asked him," I said, "What has Allah
done with you?"
And he said, "Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la
pardoned me because of my Hijra
with the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam.
Because of my migration with the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, but as for my fingers,
Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la said to to me,
I will not restore what you yourself ruined."
I will not restore what you yourself ruined.
And what did the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam do?
Tufayl says that the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam raised his hands
to the sky and he says,
"Allahumma walyadaihi faghfir,
Allahumma walyadaihi faghfir."
"Oh Allah, and for his hands, forgive him.
Oh Allah, and for his hands, forgive him."
There are numerous dreams that get narrated
and we find not just from the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam and some of the companions
but throughout history of students seeing their teachers,
and one of my favorite ones is
Also Uthman radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
And I want to actually, before we talk about
Uthman radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
and his dream of the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
Keep in mind that Uthman radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
who feared the grave more so than most of the companions.
I don't know if any other companion was narrated
to have feared the grave more than
Uthman radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
It was said about Uthman
that he used to cry at the grave in ways that he would weep
and his beard would become wet but he wouldn't cry
that way at the mentions of Al-Jannah wa Al-Naar,
of paradise and hell fire,
the way that other companions did.
And they asked him, and Uthman radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu,
who said, "This is the first station
of the stations of the Hereafter.
So if this is good, everything else will be good.
And if this is bad, then everything else will be bad.
Now, fast forward to when Uthman radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
was actually about to die.
He was under siege and he goes to sleep while he is fasting.
And he sees in his dream the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, and Abu-Bakr and Umar
may Allah be pleased with them.
And the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
is comforting Uthman radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
through the trials that he is going through.
And he tells Uthman radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu,
"Irji' fa innaka muftirun 'indi"
"Go back for you will break your fast with me.
Your iftar is going to be with the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam,
and with Abu-Bakr, and with Umar."
Uthman radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu who wakes up laughing.
He wakes up so happy and laughing and he says,
"The sun will not set tonight."
"Illa wa ana min ahlil Aakhirah"
"Except that I am amongst the people of the Hereafter."
And he grabs his mushaf
and he reads until he is assassinated and indeed, you know,
has iftar with the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
and Abu-Bakr and Umar
as he saw in that dream.
And again, there are so man different narrations.
If you read Madaarij As‑saalikeen, Ihya Ulumuddin
these books where you see students
that see their teachers and the teacher shows up
and the teacher is in a state
of Jannah, and the student asks
the teacher, you know, "How is it that you reached
that place?"
He says that, "Allah did not accept anything from me
except for two raka'ahs that I prayed at nights."
And that is a naseehah
to the student, an advice to the student to continue forward
and to pray those two raka'ahs.
How do we come to terms with this?
Are we actually seeing the dead when we dream?
Are we seeing them, are we seeing a representation of them?
How do we come to terms with this?
Well, first and foremost establish the understanding
of the dream in general.
That bad dreams are from the Shaitan and we are to seek
refuge in Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la
from them and not to entertain them.
So if you see a dream that displeases you say
"Aoudhu billahi mina shaytan ir rajeem" seek refuge in Allah
and don't seek the interpretation of that dream.
When it comes to good dreams
or when it comes to us seeing our deceased ones,
of course some people might be having, you know,
just hadith an-nafs.
Just regurgitated thoughts.
But the possibility of actually seeing a person
that has passed away is established
by the scholars of Islam.
Ibn Qayyim Rahimahullahu Ta'ala, he describes it
as the following.
He says that the soul moves freely at the time of sleep.
You know, when Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la
compares sleep to mawt it is a minor death.
Every time you go to sleep you are saying,
Bismikallahumma amootu wa ayha
"In your name, Allah, I die and I am given life."
You wake up in the morning,
Alhamdulillah Alladhee ahyana ba'da ma amaatana
Right?
"All praises be to the One who gave us life
after He took our souls, after death."
So every night you're going to sleep there is death,
your soul travels.
It moves freely during sleep
and it meets with the souls of others.
And so Ibn Qayyim Rahimahullahu Ta'ala
says that while you are asleep, it may be that your soul
would meet the soul of your loved one.
Remember, we're not limited by the dimensions
of this dunya
at the time of sleep.
And so a person might see a dead person
and the dead may give them naseehah,
might give them advice.
The dead might comfort them, right?
To let them know that I'm okay, that everything is good
Alhamdulillah
They might see their dead loved ones in a place
of Al-Jannah
or where, you know, something really good
happening with them and the soul will comfort
the soul of the living to say that I'm okay,
Alhamdulillahi Rabbil 'Alameen
It might be that the dead asks the one who is alive
to go and pay off a debt.
Maybe they weren't aware of it.
Remember, we talked about the first thing
that you do for those that have passed away.
So, you know, go to this person and pay off a debt,
or go seek forgiveness from this person
because I hurt that person.
Subhanallah, someone in my own family,
you know, passed away in Hajj, and this was years ago,
and passing away on Hajj is a form
of shahada.
But when he passed away his children all saw
the same dream at night,
they saw a dream of him,
and I'm talking about numerous children, saw a dream
of him asking them to go seek forgiveness
from a very particular person.
They all woke up and they all saw the same dream,
of him asking them to go seek forgiveness
from a particular person.
They did so, they went to that person
and then they saw a dream
of him in Al-Jannah.
As if to say, Subhanallah, I mean
Hurting people and having those things can prevent
even a righteous person, a person who dies in the most ideal
of death from reaching their desired place
with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la.
So sometimes you might see a dream and your deceased one
is telling you, "Go pay off that debt, go seek forgiveness
from that person because I hurt that person."
These are all things that we find narrated
over and over and over again.
And sometimes they might remind you of the Hereafter.
Sometimes you just seeing them reminds you of the Hereafter.
And that is also something that is there.
What can't happen obviously is that a person who you see
tells you to do something that is wrong
or gives you revelation or changes a ruling of Islam.
None of that is allowed and none of that could be
except from the Shaitan and remember that the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam mentioned
that one of the blessings of seeing the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam in a dream
is that whoever sees the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam has definitely seen him
because the Shaitan can not take the form of the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam or imitate the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam.
Now, what I want to say here though to caution
a little bit here is that sometimes the counter effect
of this is that if I don't see my deceased loved one
in a dream then I start to think something is wrong with me.
Then I start to think that, you know,
are they upset with me?
Or have they gone somewhere that I don't want them to go?
Or, you know, is Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la
angry with me?
And that is also not a way to judge
your righteousness, okay?
Because some of the most beloved people to Allah
and those that love the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam the most
never saw the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
in a dream.
That doesn't mean that they're not upon the sunnah,
that doesn't mean that they don't love the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
That means that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la
gives that blessing to some and he doesn't give
it to others.
And there is a hikma,
there is a wisdom for that.
So yes, your soul may meet the soul
of your deceased loved ones and you may long for that
and that's okay.
But don't judge your righteousness or wickedness
except by the standards
that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la has set
that transcend your death and the death of anyone else.
(birds tweeting)