in accord with the Muʿtazilites on one side and opposed to them on another, and with respect to the issues over which you and they differ, you are nearer to the Sunnah from one angle while they are nearer to the Sunnah from another. Their assertion is, from one standpoint, more unsound in (1) intellect and religion, whereas your assertion is, from another standpoint, more unsound in intellect and religion.

(2) This is because the Muʿtazilites say: “The speech of Allah is a created entity, separate from Him, and the speaker is the one who brings that speech into existence.” They also say: “Speech consists of letters and sounds, and the Qur’an that Gabriel brought down is the speech of Allah.” Moreover, they maintain: “Speech is divided into command, prohibition, and informational statement; these are kinds of speech, not its attributes. The Qur’an is other than the Torah, and the Torah is other than the Gospel, and Allah—exalted is He—speaks whatever He wills.”

Whereas you maintain that speech is a single eternal meaning subsisting (3) in the very essence of the Speaker; it is command, prohibition, and information, and these are attributes of speech, not its kinds. If that meaning is expressed in Hebrew, it is the Torah; if it is expressed (4) in Syriac, it is the Gospel; and if it is expressed in Arabic, it is the Qur’an. The composed letters, you insist, are not speech in themselves and are not the speech of Allah. The speech that Gabriel brought down from Allah is not the speech of Allah; rather, it is a narration of the speech of Allah, as Ibn Kullāb (5) said, or a paraphrase of the speech of Allah, as al-Ashʿarī (5) said.

There is no doubt that you are better than the Muʿtazilites in that you hold the speaker to be the one in whom speech subsists, and that whoever (6) has no speech subsisting in him cannot be a speaker—just as whoever lacks knowledge, power, and life cannot be knowing by them, powerful by them, or living by them,