Practices
Istikhara
Devotional Practices
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Origin 610 to 632 CE
A prayer for guidance when facing a choice: two units of voluntary prayer followed by a set supplication asking that the matter be brought about if it is good and turned away if it is not. The text of the supplication, recorded in the hadith collections, is notably restrained, it does not ask to be told the answer but asks God to decree and to make the worshipper content with what is decreed.
A widespread popular expectation is that istikhara produces a dream or a sign, and this is not what the classical manuals describe. Sunni jurists including Ibn Hajar and al-Nawawi hold that the response is the unfolding of events and the settling of the heart, not a vision. The dream interpretation is a folk elaboration with deep roots and no basis in the wording of the prayer itself. In Twelver Shia practice there is a parallel institution which additionally includes forms using the rosary or the Quran to obtain an indication, performed or authorised by a scholar; these forms have no Sunni equivalent and are themselves debated within Shia scholarship.
Facts
Practice
Who Performs ItAll adherents of the tradition 1 ObligationRecommended and meritorious, not required 1Tradition: Islam FrequencyAs the occasion requires 1 Solitary or Communal Attributions
TraditionIslam, with a parallel and more elaborate institution within Twelver Shia practice. 3 Origins
Origin Period Place of OriginMecca and Medina, Arabia 2 The supplication is recorded in the hadith collections from the Prophet's own lifetime. Controversy
Point in DisputeA widespread popular expectation that istikhara produces a dream or a sign is not what the classical manuals describe; Sunni jurists including Ibn Hajar and al-Nawawi hold that the response is the unfolding of events and the settling of the heart, and the dream reading is a folk elaboration with no basis in the prayer's own wording. 1 Status
Current StatusWidely practiced today by Sunni and Shia Muslims facing a decision, though the popular expectation of a dream or a sign persists over the classical description of a settled heart. 1 Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 1 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteIn Twelver Shia practice a parallel form of istikhara exists using the rosary or the Quran to obtain an indication, performed or authorised by a scholar, a form with no Sunni equivalent and itself debated within Shia scholarship. 4 Learn More
Seeking the Better of Two Courses
Istikhara is the Islamic prayer for guidance, offered when a believer faces a decision and wishes to seek God's help in choosing the better course. Its name means "asking for what is good," and its basis is a well-attested teaching of the Prophet Muhammad, who is reported to have instructed his followers in a specific prayer for the purpose and to have urged them to make it before any matter of consequence. The one who prays it performs two voluntary units of prayer and then recites the supplication of istikhara, in which they acknowledge God's knowledge and power over what is hidden from them and ask that, if the matter in question is good for them in their religion, their life and their end, God make it possible and bless it, and that if it is harmful, God turn it away from them and turn them away from it, and grant them contentment with whatever is decreed.
The prayer is not a request for a dream or an omen, though popular practice has sometimes attached such expectations to it. In its proper form it is a submission of the decision to God combined with the believer's own reasoned effort and consultation: having prayed, the person proceeds as their judgment directs, trusting that God will incline matters toward what is best. Istikhara thus expresses a characteristic Islamic balance between reliance on God and human responsibility, placing the outcome in God's hands while leaving the deliberation and the action to the believer.
From a Private Prayer to an App
Istikhara has moved from a private supplication said quietly before a decision into one of the most visibly popularised Islamic practices of the smartphone era, and the gap between how the classical manuals describe it and how it now circulates online is instructive. Dozens of apps and websites now offer to generate or guide an istikhara, some walking a user through the two units of prayer and the supplication with a timer and reminders, others going considerably further and offering to interpret a subsequent dream on the user's behalf, a service with no basis in the classical texts, which describe the outcome as the unfolding of events and a settling of the heart rather than a message to be decoded.
The practice is invoked overwhelmingly for a narrow set of recurring life decisions, chiefly whether to accept a marriage proposal, whether to take a job or change one, and whether to proceed with a major purchase or relocation, a pattern consistent enough across cultures that marriage in particular is often treated as the paradigm case in popular teaching on the prayer, sometimes to the point that people unfamiliar with the broader practice assume istikhara is specifically a marriage ritual. Traditional scholars who have commented on the modern digital versions generally treat the automation of the prayer itself as unproblematic, since the words and units are fixed and can be read from a screen as easily as a book, while remaining consistent in rejecting the dream-interpretation add-ons as an invention with no grounding in what the earliest sources describe the prayer as doing at all.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Twelver practice includes forms using the rosary or the Quran to obtain an indication, performed or authorised by a scholar. These have no Sunni equivalent and are debated within Shia scholarship.
Element Of
Sources
1. Prayer in Islamic Thought and Practice
2. The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition
P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.), Brill, 2005View the Source 3. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source 4. An Introduction to Shi'i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi'ism
Moojan Momen, Yale University Press, 1985On the Twelver forms of seeking an indication and their standingView the Source Sahih al-Bukhari
Muhammad al-BukhariBook of the night prayer, the report of Jabir ibn Abd Allah on the prayer for guidanceView the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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