{"id":8706,"date":"2016-06-13T14:48:13","date_gmt":"2016-06-13T14:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/?p=8706"},"modified":"2025-05-13T13:39:50","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T13:39:50","slug":"jihadist-interpretation-of-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/jihadist-interpretation-of-dreams","title":{"rendered":"Jihadist Interpretation of Dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Iain R. Edgar<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Excerpted from The Dream in Islam: From Qur\u2019anic Tradition to Jihadist Inspiration<\/a><\/em> by Iain R. Edgar.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Research has shown that some jihadists take, or at least claim to take, dreams into consideration when they make decisions to join a group, become a foreign \ufb01ghter, volunteer for operations, or pursue particular military strategies. There are several examples of jihadists claiming to make such decisions almost entirely based on al\u00adleged dreams. Thus far there is limited evidence of this in relation to the Islamic State (IS), but there are three important cases worth mentioning.<\/p>\n

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The \ufb01rst is a very interesting, albeit somewhat unreliable, report of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi allegedly taking a strategic military decision based on a dream. In March 2015, anti-IS news outlets reported that al-Baghdadi had had a dream in which the Prophet Muhammad ordered him to withdraw forces from Mosul. This was at a time when the Iraqi army had retaken Tikrit and there was speculation that it would move toward Mosul. A Kurdish website interpreted the report to mean that \u201cfear is spreading among the militants in Mosul for the predictions of liberating Mosul.\u201d<\/p>\n

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While this one report is by no means conclusive regarding the current importance of dreams within IS, the account is entirely within the realm of the possible\u2014in the past other militant leaders, such as Mullah Omar, have openly claimed to have made military decisions based on dreams. In such cases, we can never know whether the leader\u2019s dream experience is genuine or fabricated, but it is worth bearing in mind that in Islam it is considered a serious sin to lie about a dream. Even if this report was fabricated by anti-IS Kurds, it still shows how dream reports can be part of the current Middle Eastern propaganda war.<\/p>\n

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This 18th century depiction of the Prophet Muhammad shows spirits alongside the natural world.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The second data point concerns Elton Simpson, one of the two perpetra\u00adtors of the gun attack on the Muhammad cartoon exhibition in Garland, Texas, in May 2015. According to the researcher Amarnath Amarasin\u00adgam, Simpson may have been spurred to act based on a dream. Here is Amarasingam\u2019s analysis:<\/p>\n

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According to some in his baqiya family, with migration to Syria no longer viable, a few factors came together pushing Simpson to act. First, there is the increasingly vibrant narrative coming from the Islamic State that Muslim youth who cannot migrate to Syria must commit acts of violence in their home countries. Second, Simpson became aware of an event in Texas, or\u00adganized by so-called anti-Islam activist Pamela Geller to draw the Prophet Muhammad. Given the brand of Islam Simpson had adopted by this point, he clearly saw the event as a legitimate and timely target. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Then there is the dream. As some members of his online family told me, Simpson had a dream some months ago \u201cabout a woman in a hijab looking down at him on the road.\u201d For those who see themselves on the path of jihad, this dream is often seen as an indication that the women (or \u201cvirgins\u201d) of paradise are awaiting him. In other words, it is a sign that martyrdom is near. Simpson followed the signs that he believed were being sent to him and acted accordingly. For his baqiya family, however, it came as a shock. He left no clues and didn\u2019t really discuss it with them, leaving behind only a tweet pledging an oath of allegiance to the Islamic State.<\/p>\n

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Simpson did discuss his dream with IS-affiliated Twitter users. Berger writes that Simpson had been in contact with the above-mentioned \u201cEnd of Time Dreams\u201d Twitter handle days before his attack:<\/p>\n

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While a complete record of the ex\u00adchange was unavailable, due to Simpson\u2019s account having been suspended, it appeared \u201cEnd of Time Dreams\u201d arranged for a dream to be interpreted at Simpson\u2019s request several days before the attack took place.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Simpson, it would seem, was emotionally affected by this paradise virgin dream and may have been triggered by it. We cannot be sure how impor\u00adtant the dream was compared to other factors, but we cannot exclude the possibility that the dream mattered.<\/p>\n

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The third data point was presented in a New York Times<\/em> article as a dream experienced in Guantanamo Bay prison, by the deputy of the IS supreme commander in Khorasan and Afghanistan, Ha\ufb01z Saeed Khan:<\/p>\n

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The most prominent of Mr. Saeed\u2019s Afghan deputies is Abdul Rahim Mus\u00adlim Dost, a 55-year-old former poet and essayist with an extremist past. Mr. Muslim Dost, who lived most of his life in Pakistan, was detained by the security forces there soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, of\ufb01cials said. He was accused of having ties to Al Qaeda, and the United States military sent him to the prison camp at Guant\u00e1namo Bay, Cuba. He was released in 2005, and joined the Pakistani Taliban before defecting to the new Islamic State branch. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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In a video pledging allegiance to the Islamic State\u2019s leader and self-declared caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Mr. Muslim Dost said he had seen a vision of the Islamic State while he was imprisoned at Guant\u00e1namo. He dreamed of a palace with a large closed door, which he said was \u201cthe house of the caliphate.\u201d Above the door was a clock that pointed to the time: 12 minutes before 12 o\u2019clock.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt came to my mind that the caliphate would be founded after 12 years, God willing,\u201d he said in his pledge. \u201cThis interpretation of my vision was made real.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It is worth bearing in mind that we are at a very early stage in the pro\u00adcess of documenting the IS phenomenon. We may know a lot about the group\u2019s propaganda, military exploits, and governance efforts, but we have only rudimentary knowledge of the personal trajectories of IS \ufb01ght\u00aders. As more in-depth descriptions of life within IS emerge, I expect to see more evidence of dream-inspired action.<\/p>\n

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\"Iain_R._Edgar-author\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Iain R. Edgar\u00a0<\/strong>is a Social Anthropologist at the University of Durham, UK. He is the author of The Dream in Islam: From Qur’anic Tradition to Jihadist Inspiration<\/em>, now available in paperback.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Iain R. Edgar   Excerpted from The Dream in Islam: From Qur\u2019anic Tradition to Jihadist Inspiration by Iain R. Edgar.     Research has shown that some jihadists take, or at least claim to take, dreams into consideration when they make decisions to join a group, become a foreign \ufb01ghter, volunteer for operations, or… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[107,190,1665,662,208,445],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8706"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8782,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8706\/revisions\/8782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}