As for their assertion that the “speaker” is simply the one who performs the act of speech, a group from among the Ṣifātiyyah (1) contested this and said, “Rather, the speaker is the one in whom speech subsists, even if he did not originate it,” as maintained by the Kullābiyyah (2) and the Ashʿariyyah (3). A lengthy debate (4) has taken place between the two camps on this point.

The predecessors (al-salaf), the leading Imams, and the vast majority of people did not enter into that controversy. They said instead: Even if speech is called an action of the speaker, it must nevertheless inhere in him; speech cannot rightly be termed the speech of a speaker in whom it is impossible for speech to subsist. Everything heard in human languages and everything known by innate human nature testifies to this.

With regard to a jinn speaking through the tongue of a human, speech must certainly subsist in the jinn itself; its simultaneous manipulation of the human’s limbs resembles the movement of the human soul when it activates its own limbs to speak. It is also akin to a person who, by means of his speech, movement, and voice, makes a sound through a reed-pipe (5) or the like; in every such case he performs an action (6) that justifies attributing the result to him.

Their claim—“The speaker is the one who performs the act of speech even though it subsists in someone else”—is mere talk.