the utterance of a single letter or two. He said, “For such a thing there is precedent in the Scripture—so is it created or uncreated?”

I replied, “It is uncreated so long as the speaker does not intend it as a recitation of the Qur’an.”

He retorted, “Then, according to you, by your intention the Qur’an turns into ordinary speech, and ordinary speech turns into Qur’an.”

I answered, “A brief utterance can indeed change in meaning through one’s intention and purpose; I grant you that.”

Then I said, “Are you not aware that ‘There is no god but Allah’ is the very core of faith and the statement of tawḥīd?”

He said, “Yes.”

I asked, “What do you say about an atheist who says, ‘There is no god,’ intending outright negation—what is the ruling on his words?”

He replied, “They are disbelief.”

I said, “So half of the testimony of tawḥīd becomes disbelief by virtue of intention.”

I then asked, “What about a believer who set out to say, ‘There is no god but Allah,’ but managed only ‘There is no god’ before his breath failed him or he became distracted—what is the status of his words?”

He answered, “Given his circumstance, they are counted as faith.”

I said, “Thus, what was unbelief in the first case has here become faith—again, solely by intention.”

I continued, “What is your own position on the Qur’an?”

He said, “It is created.”

I asked, “And the actions of human beings?”

He replied, “They are uncreated.”

I said, “Consider Allah’s words, ‘…that He may disgrace them, grant you victory over them, and heal the breasts of a believing people’ (Qur’an 9:14). What do you call that?”

He said, “A verse.”

I asked, “According to you, is it created or uncreated?”

He said, “Created.”

I responded, “Well then, the poet Diʿbil ibn ʿAlī has woven that very verse into a line of his lengthy poem, saying: