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Salaah al-Istikharah - The Prayer for seeking Guidance

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Is Istikharah related to Dreams?

The idea behind performing al-Istikharah is that the matter is determined by Allah making the affair easy and Him granting it. So, having a dream or not makes no difference, rather if assumed that one has a dream how does he know that the dream is from the Most Merciful or from shaytaan or from talking souls:

Prophet (sallallahu alaihi wa-sallam) said: “Dreams are of three types; glad tidings from Allah, whispering of the soul or frightening thoughts from shaytaan” [Bukharee (eng. trans.) vol.8, no.595 and Muslim (eng. trans) vol.4, no.6404]

Unfortunately, contrary to the instructions of the Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu alaihi wa-sallam), Muslims today depend entirely on the prayer to make their decisions. That is they make the prayer and supplication prior to making any decision, and rely on dreams to provide the answers for them. The prayer is often repeated before sleeping for a set number of days and dream books are consulted to interpret symbols in their dreams. All this has no basis in the methodology taught by the Prophet (sallallahu alaihi wa-sallam). However, this is not to say that a good dream may not be acted upon as a confirmation of a decision, about which istikharah was made. 

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