“I have not created any creature more honored in My sight than you,” yet according to them it is the very first of the emanated beings. From this it follows that the intellect is created, whereas their doctrine denies real creation of the First Intellect—indeed of the universe itself—maintaining instead that it is merely an effect, an emanation. They distort language, saying, “The world is originated and created,” while by “originated” they mean only that it is contingent in itself but necessary through another, its existence proceeding from something outside itself, not from itself; and they mean precisely the same by “created.”

It is, however, self-evident that native speakers of Arabic never intend by the words “originated” or “created” a sense that allows the thing described to be eternal and without beginning. In their usage, origination directly contradicts pre-eternity, and the same is true of creation; the language cannot, under any circumstance, bear that a being eternal without beginning or end be called originated or created. Moreover, “created” is an even stronger term than “originated” or “contingent”: every created thing is, by unanimous agreement among linguists and theologians, originated and contingent. Whether conversely every contingent or originated thing must be called “created” is a matter disputed among the dialecticians. The language itself does not require that every contingent entity be termed “created,” for makhlūq denotes something that another has brought into being, and khalq carries both the sense of originating and that of fashioning. The word ḥādith (“contingent”) does not of itself imply that the thing is an effected product, and even muḥdath (“originated”) is broader in scope than khalq, for creation is more specific than origination.

Another point: in this ḥadīth He says, “Through you I seize and through you I give; through you comes reward and through you comes punishment.” He thereby affirms that He performs these four actions by means of it. This description fits precisely the human intellect, which is an accident inhering in man. As for the “intellect” they claim, it is, in their estimation, the producer of the heavens and the earth and all that lies between them; indeed, it is for them the lord of the entire universe. How far removed this is from something to which Allah attributes only four actions! A detailed discussion of these people has been set forth elsewhere.