Dreaming of Pen in Islam

The pen is read by whether it writes. Being given a pen by someone is the classic favourable form, read as knowledge, a trust, or a matter placed in the dreamer's hands to record or decide. Writing clearly and easily is read as a matter becoming settled, since what is written is what is fixed. A pen that will not write, or runs dry mid-word, turns the reading toward an intention that stalls at the point of execution, and the older interpreters read this as being about the writer rather than the pen. A broken pen is the hardest form and was attached to authority interrupted rather than to any person. Writing something you cannot afterwards read is read as effort spent on what is not yet clear even to yourself. Signing, or writing a name, is read as commitment rather than as knowledge. Seeing a pen without touching it is read as being near a matter that is being decided by someone else.

The Qur'anic basis is direct. An entire surah opens by swearing by the pen and what is written with it, al-Qalam 68:1, and the earliest revealed passage names the pen as the instrument of teaching, al-Alaq 96:4. In Arabic usage the pen has long stood in for the whole business of decree, record and settled decision, so the dream books read it as authority over what is written far more than as an object for writing.

A dream of a pen decides nothing and records nothing. It does not confirm a decision you are leaning toward, it is not permission, and it is not a ruling in any matter of religion or of life. Students in an exam season and anyone facing paperwork dream of pens without it carrying meaning. If a dream unsettled you, the taught response is to seek Allah's refuge from its harm, turn onto your other side, and not to pass it on.