so too, those who transmitted from the prophets—peace be upon them—that Allah speaks, commands, and forbids, and those who reached consensus on this point, never once stated that they intended by it that obscure, problematic sense that cannot be conceived at all, or can only be conceived with great difficulty. Accordingly, it is impermissible to claim that they unanimously agreed to transmit and affirm that sense; nor may one say that they concurred on affirming a meaning they did not understand, reporting from the prophets—peace be upon them—that Allah speaks and says while they themselves did not grasp the meaning of the words “speech” and “saying.” This, too, is necessarily known to be false.

When both of these possibilities are invalidated (1), it becomes clear that the consensus actually established—and what the people of tawātur (mass transmission) conveyed from the Messengers—is the very speech that both elite and common folk alike call “speech,” not that abstruse sense. Allah, exalted is He, knows best.

This is plain and evident, demonstrating the falsity of the opponent’s doctrine and the soundness of the doctrine of Ahl al-Sunnah. By the same reasoning, the doctrine of the Jahmiyyah among the Muʿtazilah (2) and the like is likewise nullified, for the proposition that speech can be detached from the speaker and subsist in something other than him is something that neither specialists nor laypeople recognize as the speaker’s own speech; and even if it were conceded, it could only be established by subtle, problematic proofs (3).

Now, since the transmitters of tawātur have reported that Allah spoke the Qur’an, and the Muslims are unanimously agreed