the created thing is whatever He brings into existence of newly originated entities and their attributes.
Many people respond to the Jahmiyyah by stating, without qualification, that “the Qur’an is the speech of Allah,” because the essence of the Jahmite position is precisely that it is not His speech at all: He neither spoke it, nor did He speak anything else.
Yet it is firmly lodged in the natural disposition (fitrah), the intellect, and the languages of mankind that a speaker’s speech must reside within him. No one is deemed a speaker on the basis of something that does not subsist in him but rather subsists in something else—just as he cannot be knowing through knowledge that lies outside him, living through a life that lies outside him, or willing by a will that lies outside him. In the same way, he cannot love and hate, be pleased and angered, through love, hatred, pleasure, and anger that subsist outside him, nor can he suffer pain, enjoy delight, rejoice, or laugh through pain, delight, joy, and laughter that subsist outside him. All of this constitutes the most self-evident, necessary, innate knowledge; only someone whose natural disposition has been corrupted would contest it.
Likewise, a person cannot be one who commands and forbids through a command and prohibition that do not reside in him but in something else; nor can he be an informant, narrator, or announcer through information, narration, and news that do not reside in him but in something else; nor one who praises, censures, lauds, or extols through praise, censure, laudation, and extolling that do not reside in him but in something else; nor one who confides, calls out, or supplicates through confidential discourse, call, and supplication that do not reside in him but only in something else; nor one who promises or threatens through promise and threat that do not reside in him but only in something else; nor one who affirms or denies through affirmation and denial that do not reside in him but only in something else; nor one who swears, makes an oath, or vows through swearing and oaths that do not reside in him but only in something else. Indeed, among the clearest and most instinctive forms of necessary knowledge possessed by the children of Adam is the certainty that such attributes must inhere in the very one described by them, and that it is impossible for them to subsist only in something other than him.
Accordingly, whoever maintains that praise and glorification, command and prohibition, report and information, promise and threat, oath and sworn pledge, call and confidential discourse, and every other form of utterance so named and described cannot possibly reside in the Commander, the Forbidder, the One who confides, calls out, reports, informs, promises, threatens, praises, and extols—namely Allah, exalted is He—but must instead reside in something else, has contradicted the universally recognised innate disposition of human beings and overturned the languages of all peoples. Moreover, in opposing both reason and language, he has also belied all the messengers and accused them of the utmost deception and obfuscation toward those they addressed, for every messenger has reported that Allah commanded, forbade, and spoke—and speaks—and it is necessarily known that their intent was that Allah Himself is the very One who