silent at one time or speaking at another, in the sense of speech coming into existence.”

He said:

“There is no disagreement in the reports from Abū ‘Abd Allāh that Allah spoke before He created creation and before anything existed, and that Allah has spoken from eternity however He wills and as He wills. When He wills, He sends down His speech, and when He wills, He does not send it down.”

I say: By his statement, “We do not say that He is silent at one time or speaking at another, in the sense of speech coming into existence,” Ibn Hāmid means that we do not say that His speech as such originated within His essence. This is what the Karrāmiyyah assert: that He existed without speaking, then began to speak after having neither spoken in eternity nor even been able to speak then.

[Abū Ismā‘īl al-Ansārī’s statement in The Virtues of Ahmad ibn Hanbal]

Abū Ismā‘īl ‘Abd Allāh ibn Muhammad al-Ansārī, known as Shaykh al-Islām, said in The Creed of Ahl al-Sunnah and Matters on Which the People of Truth within the Muslim Community Have Reached Consensus:

“Know that Allah speaks, utters words, and praises Himself. He speaks whenever He wills, and none can prevent Him from speaking or compel Him to do so. The Quran is His speech; He Himself spoke it.”

He also wrote in The Virtues of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, in the chapter outlining Ahmad’s approach to the fundamentals of religion, when discussing Ahmad’s statements on questions concerning the Quran and the sequence of innovations that arose concerning it. He mentioned that they first said, “It is created,” and the well-known ordeal ensued; then came the controversy over the claim that one’s utterance of the Quran is created, prompted by Husayn al-Karābīsī. He went on to say:

“Then came