Section: The Issue of Utterance

The sound position regarding their dispute over recitation and the verbal utterance of the Qur’an is this: the term “recitation” (qirāʾah) is a single word that embraces two senses.

1. An act; and
2. The Qur’an itself.

Yet the act cannot be set apart from the Qur’an, just as eating cannot be set apart from the food that is chewed and swallowed: the food is what is masticated and ingested, while the eating consists of mastication and swallowing.

The Qur’an, moreover, does not subsist on its own in the way that the food subsists on its own. Rather, it is realized through one of four means: writing, recitation, memorization, or listening.

• In writing, it is present through an act; that act is the tracing of script, which is created, whereas the writing itself is the Qur’an, which is uncreated.

• In recitation, it is present through an act; that act—moving the tongue and the uvula to articulate it—is created, while the words recited are the Qur’an, which is uncreated.

• In listening, it is present in the organ of hearing; listening is an act and therefore created,[1] whereas what is heard is the Qur’an, which is uncreated.

Though nothing truly resembles the Qur’an, we offer the following analogy to aid your understanding: color in a human being exists only with the body—you cannot picture color in your mind as something separate from the body. The same applies to power, ability, and movement: each exists only through the body and the limb, never independently. In just this way, the Qur’an is realized only through the four states we have mentioned; no one can conceive of it apart from them. Hence, when you say, “I recited,” “I chanted,” or