subsisting in Him; He is eternal by His speech, and that speech subsists in Him just as knowledge subsists in Him and power subsists in Him, while He is eternal with His knowledge and His power. That speech is neither letter (1) nor sound, is not divisible, composite, fragmentary, or subject to variation; rather, it is a single (2) meaning pertaining to Allah, exalted is He. The script, however, consists of the differing letters, and it is the recitation of the reciter (3). It is a mistake (4) to say that the speech of Allah is identical with Him, or a part of Him, or other than Him. The verbal expressions that convey Allah’s speech do differ and vary—[wa-kalāmu Allāh laysa bi-mukhtalifin wa-lā mutaghāyir, kamā anna dhikranā li-llāhi mukhtalifun wa-mutaghāyir] (whereas the speech of Allah itself does not differ or change, just as our acts of remembering Allah do differ and change)—yet the One remembered does not differ or change. Allah’s speech was called “Arabic” only because the graphic form that expresses it—the act of reciting it—is Arabic; it was therefore called Arabic for that reason. Likewise, it has been called “Hebrew” for a reason (6), and similarly it has been termed a command, a prohibition, and an informative statement, each for its own reason. Allah has always been speaking, long before He named His speech a command and before the occasion on account of which He (7) named (8) His speech a command; the same applies to its being called a prohibition (9) or an informative statement. He rejected the claim that the Creator has eternally been “informing” or eternally “prohibiting.”

Then it is said: Even if it be assumed that He did not bring it into being, there is no doubt that it is an obscure, problematic meaning whose very existence is disputed, and its existence can only be envisioned through subtle evidences; and if it is