in a locus becomes the speech of that locus, not (1) of the one who originated it. As for the meanings, they allege that nothing of Allah’s speech exists except one single meaning (2): a command concerning everything, a prohibition concerning everything, and a report concerning everything. The falsity of this claim is self-evident as soon as it is conceived, and it necessarily entails that the meanings of the Qur’an are likewise not Allah’s speech—(3) for what they have posited cannot possibly have any real existence, (4) let alone serve as an attribute of a subject, or qualify as speech at all.

It therefore becomes clear that, in their estimation, Allah did not speak the Qur’an—neither its letters nor its meanings—and this is a decisive conclusion from which they cannot escape. Added to this is their explicit admission that the revealed Qur’an, in both its letters and its meanings, is not Allah’s speech; thus it emerges that their assertion is: the Qur’an is not the speech of Allah.

As for the pure Jahmiyyah such as the Muʿtazilah, although they claim that the Qur’an is created, most of them nonetheless state without hesitation that the Qur’an is the speech of Allah. Yet the real substance of their position returns to its not being Allah’s speech, as their sharper minds concede upon scrutiny, maintaining that Allah has never spoken and will never speak, or else claiming that describing Him as “Speaker” is only figurative, not literal (5). These who in truth deny Allah’s speaking are therefore worse than the former group (6), even though their outward profession that the Qur’an is the speech of Allah is more emphatic than that of the others.

Hence it becomes clear that the Muʿtazilite denial of speech for Allah is the more emphatic