—not the speech of those who convey it, even though they transmit it in their own voices.

A second faction then emerged, saying, “What is being heard are our own utterances and our own voices; our words are not the words of Allah, for these sounds are created, whereas the speech of Allah is uncreated.”

Their intention was to affirm that Allah’s speech is uncreated, yet they ended up denying that this Qur’an is the speech of Allah. They failed to grasp that—although it is indeed Allah’s speech—it reaches us as His speech conveyed on His behalf; it is not His speech heard directly from Him. Therefore, just because the servants’ deeds and their voices are created and are not Allah’s speech, it does not follow that the very words they recite with their actions and voices are their own created speech rather than the speech of Allah.

Among those who said, “This is not the speech of Allah,” some maintained that it is merely a ḥikāyah (narrative portrayal) of Allah’s speech. They extended this claim to every instance in which someone relays another’s words, insisting that what the transmitter delivers is no more than a narrative depiction of the original speaker’s words, not the speaker’s very words.

Within the proponents of this “narration” view, some say that the Lord’s speech comprises composed letters—either subsisting in His Essence, according to one opinion, or created in something other than Him, according to another—while what subsists in His Essence is, they allege, a single, undivided meaning.

Others among them argue that the narration is identical to what is narrated; hence, they refuse to call it a ‘narration’ and instead deem it an ‘expression’ of it. In their construal, the Qur’anic directive “then grant him protection so that he may hear the words of Allah” should be understood as “until he hears an expression of those words, or their narration.”

Thereafter, a third faction said: “Rather, it has been established that what is heard…"