And when the counterfeit “recitation” of Musaylima(1) was read aloud to Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq, may Allah be pleased with him, he said, “This is speech(2) that has not come forth from any il(3),” meaning: any Lord.
Among the articles it contains is the following:
“Part of faith in Him is to believe that the Qur’an is the speech of Allah, sent down, uncreated, originating from Him and returning to Him; that Allah truly spoke it; and that this Qur’an which Allah revealed to Muhammad ﷺ is in reality the speech of Allah, not the speech of anyone else. It is impermissible to state that it is [p. 80] merely a report of Allah’s speech or a paraphrase of it. Rather, when people recite the Qur’an(4) or write it in codices, it does not thereby cease to be the speech of Allah, for speech, in its proper sense, is ascribed to the one who initiates it, not to the one who merely conveys and delivers it.”
Some of them bristled at affirming(5) that it is truly the speech of Allah, even while acknowledging that Allah actually spoke it. He later accepted this once it was explained to him that a metaphor may indeed be negated, whereas this cannot be negated; and once it was clarified to him that the transmitted sayings of the early generations and the verses credited to individual poets are, in fact, their own speech.(6) [Thus, attributing the Qur’an to Allah