some of the disbelievers said to Abu Bakr al-Ṣiddīq, “Are these your words or the words of your Companion?” He replied, “They are neither my words nor the words of my Companion; they are the words of Allah.”

For that very reason Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal and the other leading imams of Islam voiced a vigorous repudiation. In reacting against the Jahmīs, some went to the opposite extreme and declared, “Our utterance of the Qur’an is uncreated,” employing phrases that entailed—or at least intimated—that something of human attributes might itself be uncreated. Aḥmad refuted this, as did Ibn al-Mubārak, Isḥāq ibn Rāhawayh, al-Bukhārī, and many other imams of the Sunnah. They made it clear that the paper, the ink, the voices of worshippers, and their actions are all created, whereas the speech of Allah that His servants memorize, recite, and write down is itself uncreated.

The statements of the imams of the Sunnah and the main body of Muslims on this matter are numerous, unanimous, and all of them are sound.