Another issue arises out of this discussion concerning those who assert that the sounds heard from a Qurʾān-reciter—or that some of the sounds heard from him—are, in fact, God’s own voice. They build this claim upon the same underlying principle: sounds, they say, do not lie within the servants’ power, nor are they their acts or acquisitions; rather, all sounds are to be ascribed to God. The attribution, they argue, varies with the context: if the sounds convey human speech, they are ascribed to Him by way of creation, whereas if they convey God’s speech, they are ascribed to Him as an attribute. These sounds, they continue, are manifest in the created being without inhering in him; their manifestation simply coincides with the servant’s motion.

A group has indeed advanced such a view, yet its falsity is self-evident—by necessity, by direct perception, and by the consensus of the overwhelming majority of rational people. It is a spurious claim founded upon a spurious premise, offered only as an argument ad hominem against those Ashʿarīs who share with them the notion that audible sounds are not within human power.

Many Ashʿarīs are inconsistent in this regard: when debating the Muʿtazilīs they maintain that human sounds are neither within the servants’ capacity nor produced by them, but when discussing the Qurʾān they hold that those very sounds are within human capacity and produced by them. A full treatment of this topic is given elsewhere.

What matters here is that the great majority of Muslims affirm the truth borne out by both revelation and reason: human deeds are created and brought about by God, yet they are, in the real—not merely figurative—sense the servants’ own acts. They acknowledge the causes and purposes God has placed in His creation and command, and the forces and natural dispositions He has set within bodies, whether animate or inanimate; yet, in affirming these causes and purposes, they do not espouse the creed of the naturalist philosophers. Rather, they declare that God is the Creator and Lord of all things.