As for the first person to promote this idea within Islam, some scholars say that he was an atheist and a covert heretic who knew that his claim necessarily entailed negating the Maker. He therefore advanced it just as other zindīqs had contrived the doctrine of Rafd while hiding behind a professed love for ʿAlī. Once Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jamāʿah—and the great majority—had unanimously affirmed that the Speech of Allah is uncreated, those who opposed them split into four factions.

Two of those factions said: If it is not created, then it must be eternal, for speech is either a created entity existing apart from the Lord or an eternal attribute subsisting in Him. What is eternal pertains to His attributes, whereas what is created and external pertains to His acts. They further maintained that speech, like life, is in no way connected to His will, power, or choice; hence one may not say that He is able to speak, or that He speaks by His will, choice, and power. These groups also denied that successive acts arise within Him, arguing: “This is the very proof we used to establish the origination of the world and of bodies—namely, that nothing is free of temporal events. If temporal events occur within a thing it is not devoid of them, and whatever is not devoid of temporal events is itself originated.”