Choosingwhointerpretsadream

Why the person matters more than the method

Interpretation is not forbidden, and the previous page sets out that the Prophet ﷺ interpreted dreams and permitted some of his Companions to do so. There is a genuine discipline here and a person is entitled to seek it.

What decides whether he gets anything of value is who he takes it to, and that is not a matter of credentials. It follows from what interpretation actually is. Ibn ʿUthaymīn holds that there are no fixed rules in it, because identical images differ greatly in meaning depending on the dreamer and his circumstances — which means that a reading produced without knowledge of the dreamer is not interpretation in any sense the scholars would recognise.

The Prophet’s ﷺ own dream before Uḥud is the illustration. He saw a notch in his sword and cattle being slaughtered, and understood the first as a loss among his own family and the second as men of his Companions who would fall. A dictionary of symbols would have offered something generic about swords and cattle. The meaning depended entirely on who was dreaming and what was about to happen to him.

The good signs

He asks a great deal about you. Your age and situation, whether you are married, what has been happening lately, what was on your mind, whether you have had the dream before, what you felt on waking. An interpreter who wants all of that is an interpreter doing the work, because the material he is reading is your life and not a list of images.

He grounds it in the Quran and the Sunnah. The tradition of interpretation runs through the dreams in Sūrat Yūsuf, through the Prophet’s ﷺ own readings, and through what the scholars built on them. Somebody working from that will refer to it.

He shows you how he got there. Not a verdict but a reasoning — this image, in your circumstances, with what you have told me, suggests this. A reading you can follow is a reading you can weigh.

He says when he does not know. Interpretation is judgement, and a person exercising judgement honestly will sometimes decline.

And he speaks gently. The etiquette is in the sources: if he sees good let him say it, and if he sees otherwise let him say something good or remain silent. An interpreter directed towards silence rather than accuracy is not running a diagnostic service, and one who understands that will not frighten you.

The warning signs

He asks nothing. You describe the dream, he supplies a meaning, and he has learned nothing about you at all. Whatever that is, it is not the discipline the scholars describe, because the one variable it depends on has been left out.

He knows nothing about you and does not seem to need to. A stranger on a telephone, a name in a newspaper column, a slot on a television programme, an application returning a stock paragraph.

He is certain about the future. Interpretation is not prophecy, and a person telling you what will happen has left the discipline.

He gives you something frightening and then something to buy. A reading that arrives with a treatment attached is a sales structure.

And he is paid by the minute. Al-Munajjid’s fatwa site records paid telephone lines on which the interpreter takes a share of the call revenue, splitting the charge with the telecommunications company. The longer you stay on, the more he earns — which places a financial interest on one side of a judgement only he is in a position to make.

What you are entitled to hold on to

That no ruling is built on a dream, which the next page covers, and which means an interpretation is one person’s reading rather than information about your future. Take a good one as a thoughtful opinion from somebody who knows you, and hold it lightly.

And if you cannot find anybody you trust, you are not stuck. Ibn ʿUthaymīn’s counsel is that for a dream which disturbed you, the response the Prophet ﷺ prescribed — the dry spitting, the refuge, telling nobody, turning over — is more effective than being told what it meant. That is available to everybody, it takes fifteen seconds, and it needs no interpreter at all.