like everything else He brings about. Thus, His making a servant know is comparable to His making him hear and see, and enabling him to act.

It is well known that none but Allah can do this; moreover, it extends to all animate creatures.

Allah Most High says:

“Glorify the name of your Lord, the Most High, * who created and proportioned, * and who ordained and guided.”
[al-A‘lā: 1–3]

And Moses said:

“Our Lord is He who gave each thing its form, then guided it.”
[Tā Hā: 50]

Does this mean that Allah has spoken to everyone whom He has caused to know something they did not previously know?

Furthermore, this is not analogous to a human being addressing someone through his own utterance. Nor does this involve an intermediary in the act of speaking; rather, it is itself the intermediary.

He affirms two things: first, an act of Allah, namely speaking; and second, another intermediary distinct from that act.

This is untenable for two reasons. First, the act is distinct from its effect, as he has acknowledged more than once. Yet here he affirms no act of Allah distinct from what comes into being within the person receiving inspiration.

Second, there is no intermediary here other than this newly occurring thing. In his view, the servant’s coming to know is itself the act of speaking, and it is an effect brought about by the True One.

If, before this knowledge arises, one supposes that a readiness is created in the servant, conditions are established, and impediments removed, these are merely the conditions of knowledge—like reflection and inference in the case of knowledge acquired through them.

As for his statement:

“Through an utterance that Allah creates in the hearing of the listener singled out for His speech,”

he may be answered as follows: If this utterance exists in something outside the listener, then this is the position of the Mu‘tazilites, who say that Allah spoke to Moses through speech created in something other than Himself.