convey my greetings of peace to your community, and tell them that Paradise has rich soil and sweet water, that it consists of level plains, and that its trees are planted by saying: Glory be to Allah, praise be to Allah, there is no god but Allah, and Allah is the Greatest.’” Al-Tirmidhī said: “A sound hadith.”

It is clear that the apparent meaning of reports of this kind is not that the very act or utterance subsisting in the speaker, and the speaker himself, are the actual trees of Paradise. Rather, their apparent meaning is that these words give rise to trees in Paradise, which Allah plants there. Whenever the servant utters these words, trees are planted for him. This is the apparent meaning, whether Allah Most High gives that very deed the form of those trees, just as He forms