Mass-transmitted hadiths from the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—state unequivocally that Allah singled out Moses for direct speech, a distinction not granted to Abraham, Jesus, and others like them (1). Yet, according to your teaching, there is no such difference; indeed, some of your own leading figures have claimed that an ordinary person who is not a prophet can hear Allah’s speech just as Moses son of ‘Imran heard it. Thus anyone who experiences an inner inspiration, in your estimation, has been addressed by Allah in the very manner that He addressed Moses. It is well known, however, that even the Mu‘tazilah never descended to such an extreme in their deviation.

In fact, one who says that Allah honored Moses by creating speech in the surrounding air for him to hear is guilty of a lesser innovation than someone who alleges that Allah did nothing more than cause Moses to grasp a meaning He intended. Your view, rather, comes close to that of the philosophers who maintain that Allah has no speech except what exists within souls, and that He spoke to Moses from the “heaven” of Moses’ own intellect—though you part company with them by affirming an eternal meaning that subsists in Allah’s Essence.

Moreover, you have treated the Quran’s presence in the written codices as though Allah Himself were present in them, saying that His words, “Indeed, it is a noble Quran (77) in a well-guarded Book” (2) are on the same footing as His words, “whom they find written with them in the Torah and the Gospel” (3). Yet it is plain that what is mentioned in the Torah is His Name, and that what Allah causes to be written in the muṣḥaf is likewise His Name. His Names, therefore, stand (4) in the position of His Speech; it is not (5) His very Essence that stands in the position of His Speech. For every entity there are four (6) modes of existence: existence in external reality, existence in minds, existence in