which He brought into being and attributed to Himself, just as we say: “Allah’s creation, Allah’s servant, and Allah’s act.”

He said: “This argument left Ibn Kullāb and his peers hard-pressed, owing to their scant knowledge of the transmitted traditions, their refusal to accept them, and their surrender to unaided reason.”

They therefore accepted what the Mu‘tazilīs had asserted, brazenly denied what was plainly observable, and violated the consensus shared by everyone, Muslim and unbeliever alike. They said to the Mu‘tazilīs: “What you have described is not speech in its true sense. It is called speech only figuratively, because it reproduces or expresses speech. Speech in its true sense is a meaning subsisting in the speaker’s essence.”

Some confined themselves to this definition. Others sought to exclude what they knew would otherwise fall within it, adding the qualification: “incompatible with silence, muteness, and conditions that prevent speech.” They then proceeded from this to maintain that affirming letters and sounds in Allah’s speech amounts to ascribing a body to Him, and that affirming language in it amounts to likening Him to His creation. They clung to specious arguments, including these words of al-Akhtal:

Expression comes from the heart; the tongue was made
Only to show what lies within.