—a special favor indeed. By this and similar proofs one comes to know (1) that those who claim the Qur’an to be created—although in some respects their doctrine is more loathsome than that of these people, such as their denial that speech subsists with Allah—are nonetheless surpassed in odiousness by these people in other respects, for example: they refuse to allow that the speech of Allah is truly His speech, they reduce it to something devoid of any real existence, and so on.

Sixty-fourth point: In answering what Allah has related about Himself—namely, that He has “words”—they have produced nothing that possesses any reality. They say, “Allah has no speech but a single meaning to which multiplicity is impossible,” yet Allah, exalted is He, has declared that He has words (2): were the seas ink and the trees pens, those words would still not be exhausted. This is an explicit affirmation of a multiplicity beyond the servants’ ability to count. How, then, can it be claimed that He has no words at all, much less anything beyond that?

As for their assertion that the plural serves only for magnification, citing His statement, “Indeed, it is We who have sent down the Reminder” (3), we reply: such usage occurs only in contexts where the wording itself makes clear that the intended referent is one, and Allah—glorified be He—has clarified in many places that He is One. Thus, when He says, “Indeed, it is We who have sent down the Reminder” (4) and “Indeed, We have opened [for you]” (5), the audience already knows that He is One, and these expressions do not imply a plurality of deities.

Nevertheless, some have said that the plural form in cases such as (6) these alludes to the abundance of meanings contained in His Names, and this interpretation is fitting. As for speech, however, Allah has never described it in that way, nor has any Muslim ever maintained such a claim.