The ‘true dream’ in contemporary Islamic/Jihadist dreamwork: a case study of the dreams of Taliban leader Mullah Omar

Articulating Islam: Anthropological Approaches to Muslim Worlds

“…The moral is no less present, but this work emphasises ambivalence of everyday experience, its incoherence, and failure to live up to the ideal, where boundaries between different ways of being Muslim are not clearly defined Simon 2009). Other anthropologists have explored how Muslims negotiate conceptions of selfhood, often in situations of conflict or crisis, through experiences of spirit possession (Masquelier 2001;McIntosh 2004), encounters with Muslim 'saints' in dreams or at their tombs (Edgar 2006;, or through the experience of illness and suffering (MacPhee 2003). A prominent example is Katherine Ewing's psychoanalytically inspired discussion of the way Pakistani Muslims negotiate between multiple Islamic and non-Islamic discourses.…”

Dreams and Politics: How Dreams May Influence Political Decisions

“…In doing this, Omar followed the example of Abdul Rahman, a previous ruler of Afghanistan (1880–1901), who claimed in his autobiography that he had seen a vision of the Prophet choosing him to lead the country, thereby claiming a higher level of legitimacy over his rivals. In a later article, Edgar () quoted from an interview he tape recorded in 2007 with Rahimullah Yusufzai, then BBC correspondent in Peshawar, Pakistan, and one of the few journalists who had actually interviewed Mullah Omar. Yusufzai verified the influence of dreams on the Mullah: “I was told by so many Taliban leaders, commanders, fighters, ‘Look, you know, Mullah Omar is a holy man and he gets instructions in his dream and he follows them up’” (cited in Edgar, , p. 6).…”

Motivation and Justification from Dreams: Muslim Decision‐Making Strategies in Punjab, Pakistan

“…The case studies discussed in this paper identify a set of beliefs about dreams that are influential in decision making in a number of social contexts in Muslim societies (see Edgar 2006;2007). To make sense of the impact of dreams on decisions, it is useful to employ Lukes' two cases of rationality.…”

“…Daily horoscopes are a feature of countless newspapers in North America and Europe, but that does not render them trustworthy in the eyes of most people _ ; so we must be cautious about assuming that Muslims treat such publications are more than entertainment. There are however, enough ethnographic accounts of the seriousness with which many Muslims regard what are classified as true dreams (again, see Balzani; Louw this issue, as well as Edgar 2006;2007), that it is safe to conclude that dreams are not merely entertainment for many (and possibly most) 1 Though clearly not all--if one treats certain bodily functions as decisions, then one could argue that little higher cognitive functioning is necessary to arrive at appropriate decisions._ 2 As with a great many terms used in this paper, I shall dispense with a systematic discussion of the ambiguities and contradictions introduced with the concept of indigenousness. Suffice to say that I do not restrict such a term to subsistence rainforest dwellers or small scale isolated communities, but rather imply something broader that encompasses any relatively coherent, identifiable local population that self identifies as having some communitarian cultural systems in common._ 3 Charpai perhaps needs no translation for a British audience, but for the sake of clarity, a charpai is the four legged cot, sofa or bed that serves so many functions across South Asia._ 4 Even those who subscribe to astrology and accord it a certain degree of external, universal validity, are often disdainful of the daily horoscope found in newspapers._…”