Dreaming of Tears in Islam

Tears are read by their temperature, their cause, and whether there is any sound with them. Cool tears falling quietly are read favourably in the older interpretations, as relief and a weight coming off. Hot tears are read as grief still active, a wound not yet closed. Weeping from fear of Allah, or in prayer, is the highest reading of all and is not treated as a sorrow at all. Weeping with wailing, tearing at oneself, or striking the face, is read heavily, because that manner of grieving is disapproved of in the tradition however sincere the pain behind it. Wanting to cry and being unable to is read as feeling held back or unspoken. Seeing someone else weep shifts the reading onto them and onto what you sense they carry. Tears that turn to blood is read as grief past what words are handling.

The distinction the interpreters drew was not invented for dreams: the tradition treats the tear shed out of fear of Allah as something honoured, and treats loud, self-harming lamentation as a separate matter altogether. Weeping in itself was never censured — the Prophet, peace be upon him, wept at the death of his own son — so the readings turn on the manner of the weeping, not on the fact of it.

A dream of tears does not announce a bereavement, a loss, or bad news for anyone. It is not a ruling and no decision should rest on it. Grief you are already inside, an illness in the family, exhaustion or something unresolved before sleep will each produce it; and a dream that lets you weep is often the mind doing what the day did not permit. If you woke distressed, the practice taught is to seek refuge in Allah from its harm, turn onto the other side, and keep it to yourself.