—all while claiming to be affirming the very wording itself. Yet the unqualified expressions “qawl” (saying), “nuṭq” (utterance), “kalām” (speech), and the like embrace them both, just as the term “human being” encompasses both soul and body, even though either one may, when taken alone, be called by that name. Whoever refuses to take this course will have proofs pour down upon him (1) for denying an evident truth, for the scriptural, linguistic, and customary evidences that the name includes them both, and that either of the two may be so designated, are too numerous to count.

However, this inner utterance and speech—the meaning of the report that resides within the self—are they something other than knowledge so that they could conceivably stand in opposition to it (2)? Or are they identical to knowledge? Or do they necessarily accompany it (3)? The assertion that they could conflict with knowledge (4) is contradicted by what a person directly senses within himself (5); and the assertion that they are nonetheless distinct from knowledge is likewise untenable, for no one feels in himself two decisive relations, each of which grasps the same particular object, one being knowledge and the other something that is not knowledge (6).

For this reason, there has been no dispute over the matter—neither among the Muslims (7) nor among the nations before them. Even the logicians, who affirm an inner speech and refer to the soul as “the rational soul,” ultimately, upon closer examination, reduce that faculty to knowledge and discernment (8).

Thus, when the astute later Ashʿarī scholar Abū al-Ḥasan al-Āmidī (9)