The Muslims have understood the distinction between hearing a speaker’s words directly from him and hearing them from someone conveying them on his behalf. Moses heard Allah’s speech directly from Allah, without an intermediary, whereas we hear Allah’s speech from those who convey it from Him. If there is an established distinction between someone who heard the Prophet’s words directly from him, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and someone who heard them from a Companion conveying them on his behalf, then the distinction here is all the more evident. For the actions and attributes of one created being resemble those of another more closely than they resemble Allah’s actions and attributes.

Since the Jahmiyyah say that Allah did not truly speak, but rather created speech in something other than Himself—and those among them who state that Allah truly spoke mean this same thing, so their disagreement is merely verbal—it is clear that when someone says, “This Quran is created,” his words convey that Allah did not speak this Quran and that it is not His speech; rather, He created it in something other than Himself.

If he explains his intention by saying, “I meant that the servant’s movements and voice, and the ink, are created,” then this meaning, although correct, is neither what his words convey nor what his statement means. For when Muslims say, “This Quran is Allah’s speech,” they do not mean that the reciters’ voices and movements subsist in Allah’s essence. Likewise, when they say, “This hadith is the hadith of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace,” they do not mean that the narrator’s movements and voice subsisted in the essence of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.

The same applies when they say, concerning the recitation of Labīd’s verse—

“Indeed, everything apart from Allah is vain”—