and the created—the muṣḥaf (the written codex).
The Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—says:
"The extremist Jahmiyyah imitate them to an extraordinary degree, yet our present concern is with the resemblance shown by those who claim that speech is a single meaning subsisting in the Divine Essence.
It may therefore be said to them:
You have affirmed that speech is a single, indivisible meaning that never varies, and that this very one meaning is at the same time a command, a prohibition, and a statement of fact. In doing so you have turned the one into three, making what you insist is indivisible into three distinct realities.
This is a striking parallel to the Christians, who say: ‘The Lord is one God, one substance, yet He is also three substances,’ rendering Him both one and three at once.
Then you assert:
This single speech—being command, prohibition, and report—descends at one time as a command, at another as a report, and at yet another as a prohibition. When it descends as a command it is not a report, and when it descends as a report it is not a command. Thus, when Allah revealed it as the Throne Verse, which is informative, it was not the Debt Verse, which is directive. This, perhaps, is among the strongest points of resemblance to the Christians, who say that the one substance, which is three substances—three hypostases—when it unites becomes only the Word and the Son, not the Father nor the Holy Spirit. Just as they maintain that what is one both unites and does not unite—uniting insofar as it is the Word, yet not uniting insofar as it is Existence—so these theologians maintain that the one speech both descends and does not descend: it descends insofar as it is a command, and does not descend insofar as it is a report.
Moreover, they have imitated the Christians in distorting the designations “word” (kalima) and “speech” (kalām). The Messiah was called the Word of Allah because Allah created him by His word… Yet at times they make that word an attribute of Allah, saying it is His knowledge; at other times they regard it as a self-subsistent substance that united with the Messiah. These theologians likewise have distorted the meaning of speech, claiming that it is nothing more than a bare meaning, and that this meaning is neither knowledge nor will nor anything akin to them, but is a single entity that nonetheless comprises multiple, differing realities…"
Furthermore, with respect to the wording of the Quran—its letters—and the meaning it carries, they display a marked resemblance to the Christians regarding the body of Christ, which, in their view, is the garment of divinity; for these theologians likewise agree that the letters of the Quran are not the speech of Allah, but are created,