Is the vision from the knowledge of the unseen? And does Allah grant this to whom He wills among His servants?

The questioner : Shaykh, regarding the vision, when you said that it is a gift, is the vision from the unseen or is it not from the unseen?

The Shaykh : Did I say that the vision is a gift?

The questioner : The interpretation of the vision is a gift.

The Shaykh : May Allah forgive you, what is the difference in that?

The questioner : May Allah reward you with good. The interpretation of the vision is a gift according to some. The interpretation of the vision, according to some scholars, is a gift. Is it from the unseen, the vision, or is it not from the unseen? And if it is unseen, does anyone other than the prophets know it?

The Shaykh : Take it easy, my brother. The question should not be a lecture. May Allah bless you. S and J. I ask the first question.

The questioner : Is the righteous vision...

The Shaykh : Visions are unseen, and he (peace and blessings be upon him) said: or as he (peace and blessings be upon him) said.

The questioner: Yes.
Abu Malik:

The Shaykh : The righteous vision, yes. So it is unseen.

The questioner : So is there anyone who knows the unseen except those whom Allah (Glorified and Exalted is He) taught from the prophets, as you said that scholars know this vision is a gift?

The Shaykh : I did not say about... Yes, they know it as inspiration from Allah (Mighty and Majestic).

The questioner : He inspires them, meaning some of the unseen?

The Shaykh : No, this is not unseen. May Allah bless you. The unseen, this question is actually very important.
Abu Malik: Good, yes.

The Shaykh : Yes, let us know what the difference is between the knowledge of the unseen and the intuition (firasah) by which one sometimes hits the mark, and which is mentioned in some of the authentic books of the Sunnah on one hand, and exaggerated by those who claim to belong to Sufism on the other hand. I think you all know his (peace and blessings be upon him) saying: And the meaning of "muhaddathun" is "inspired ones." Inspiration is not revelation, but it sometimes meets revelation in terms of discovering what will happen as a suspicion and not a certainty, a suspicion and not a certainty. That is, the one who is inspired with something cannot say that this will definitely happen, except in very, very rare cases, and he admits that he is not protected from error. As for revelation, he is certain of it, just as he is alive, he is certain that what Allah revealed to him is from the revelation of the sky; no doubt, ambiguity, or uncertainty enters it. So now, What does "muhaddathun" mean? It means "inspired ones." So what is inspiration? You know that 'Umar ibn al-Khattab spoke about matters for which the Qur'an was revealed in accordance with what he spoke, such as his saying, for example: "If you were to veil your women," and Allah revealed the verse of the hijab. And his saying, for example: "If we were to take the station of Ibrahim as a place of prayer," and so on of this kind. What Imam Malik narrated in al-Muwatta with a sound chain is that Abu Bakr al-Siddiq said to his daughter Aisha regarding a piece of land concerning the inheritance of Abu Bakr's (may Allah be pleased with him) children: "As I recall now, this is for your sister," and the sister was still in the womb of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq's wife. She said: "Where is my sister?" He said: "She is the one in the womb of so-and-so." And indeed, she was blessed with a daughter, and she inherited that land with her sister by the bequest of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq. This inspiration and this story are in al-Muwatta with a sound chain in which there is no doubt, because in al-Muwatta there are many broken reports and statements, much of which is not authentic, even if some are connected in other books. But this story is authentic. If we know this fact, the difference between revelation and inspiration, we can now enter the core of the answer. If a scholar like Ibn Sirin interprets the vision that a dreamer or a seer related to him, he cannot say that it will be so. So this is not at all from the category of accessing the unseen, but rather it is suspicion, and suspicion may hit the mark and may miss. And this happens among scholars in many, many occasions. So much so that some of the sheikhs of the Sufi paths exploit these occurrences and mislead people into thinking that they are revelations and that they access what is in the hearts of people. The truth is that none of that is the case; it is only intuition. So, and I will relate some of what happened to me personally regarding the disclosure of secrets, so that you are not deceived by some of what you may hear from some people. So it is clear that Ibn Sirin and those like him, who may be gifted with the knowledge of interpreting visions, that is not from the category of accessing the unseen, because no one knows the unseen except Allah, by the explicit text of the Noble Qur'an. Then, as He said in the Noble Qur'an also: The unseen is that which the messenger is certain of, that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) revealed. As for the scholar with intuition or the interpreter of dreams, he has not accessed the unseen; he may hit the mark and may miss. I will relate to you some stories that happened to me, which first do not indicate righteousness and do not indicate wickedness, but rather indicate that this person in charge has some knowledge and some alertness, so he hit the target. If he wanted to deceive these people, he would say these are revelations and you deny them. I remember clearly that I was in my shop repairing watches when one of our Palestinian brothers, who had fled the oppression of the Jews to Damascus and got to know the Salafi call, and praise be to Allah, came to me one day with a farmer. And I knew in advance, and here the topic of intuition begins, I knew in advance that this man is a professor in some of the villages around the town of Homs, there on the road to Aleppo. He brought me a watch called the foreigner "Rabco." He said: "Look, this watch has stopped, we want to repair it for this brother of ours." So I understood that this brother of his is from that village immediately. I said to him: "Did you buy it from here, from Damascus, from such-and-such a shop?" He said: "Yes, and he did not care about it, but I caught his attention because he is a Salafi with us." I said to him: "Here, you deny disclosure, this is disclosure, this is it. I knew that this is the watch of the one who lives in a village far from Damascus, about 150 or 200 kilometers, and close to Homs. I say, where did you buy it? From Damascus. So I hit the mark. This was intuition because I connected this brand, whose trader is not known except in Damascus, and the one who wants to buy it must come here because it is not available in other lands. So he hit the target exactly. So I drew his attention to this joke: 'This is disclosure and you deny disclosure!' But at the same time, a joke much more eloquent than this: a student of knowledge, a strong student in what is called the sciences of the apparatus, in grammar and morphology, etc., came to me. He said to me, after greeting, of course: "Shaykh, a verse is difficult for me, the reference of the pronoun in it." I said to him: "Perhaps, I did not say to him it is such-and-such because I was being cautious. I said: 'Perhaps you mean His saying, the Exalted: ' He said: 'By Allah, this is it too. I went back to them and said to them: 'Are you still denying disclosure?! This is disclosure. What happened to me? It was, if I may express it, the divine computer. What a man, a student of knowledge stronger than me in the sciences of the apparatus, a pronoun in a verse was difficult for him, where does it refer to? Within the limits of what I knew, I recalled the verse and said to him: 'Perhaps it is this?' He said: 'It is, it is.' So this is not disclosure; this is an expression of intuition and premises that form in the mind of the one with intuition, so he hits the mark sometimes and misses sometimes. Likewise, the interpreter or the one who interprets visions may hit the mark sometimes and miss sometimes. So this has absolutely no relation to having accessed the unseen. This is the answer to what you asked. Now it is nine o'clock."
Abu Malik: A quarter of an hour, if Allah wills, or ten minutes, and we will leave.

The Shaykh : Please go ahead.
Abu Malik: From this knowledge or this type of knowledge, that a student was at the Islamic University when I was there, and this...The student : The truth is, he had very sincere intuition, and I think the hadith, Shaykh, which is that the believer knows by observation...

The Shaykh : Yes, exactly.
Abu Malik: By observation, so this...The student : And he is from India, he said to me: "I have become calling upon Allah (Mighty and Majestic) to distance me from intuition, to keep this intuition away from me." I said to him: "Why?" He said: "If I walk in the street and look at people's faces, I know that this person may be one who has committed fornication."

The Shaykh: Allahu Akbar.
Abu Malik: Yes, to this extent. He said, and when I asked and my question reached the end, he knew that this was indeed...

The Shaykh : His intuition hits the mark.
Abu Malik: So, by nature, it is reported in the Sunnah that the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) — meaning, it was a known matter — when he passed by Zayd ibn Harithah and his son Usamah, and they were of different complexions, he said, "I bear witness that these two feet are from these two feet," or the meaning of the hadith is that physiognomy is a reality that pertains to visible things and to invisible things, and it is a gift of knowledge, not a knowledge sought in the pages of books.

The Shaykh: Correct.
Abu Malik: Please, Abu Muhammad.

Another questioner : Our esteemed Shaykh

The Shaykh : Yes, are you holding a newspaper?

Another questioner : I and some of my brothers have a set of questions
Abu Malik: One is enough.

The questioner : We ask your eminence to answer as many of them as you can.

The Shaykh : You are frightening us with the number of questions. Please, go ahead.