for the angels and human beings who hear it. If the remembrance is within Himself, however, it is not heard. This hadith explicitly refutes their doctrine.

As for the Kullābiyyah and the Ashʿariyyah, they do not deny that remembrance subsists in His Essence as inner speech. Yet they allow no distinction between its being public and private, for the meaning subsisting in His Essence cannot be divided into secret and public remembrance. Nor, in their view, can some of it be within the Lord Himself and some among the angels. At most, some of them say that He may cause the angels to hear what He makes them hear; the distinction would thus lie in His creating perception in the angels. But the hadith explicitly distinguishes between His remembering within Himself and His remembering in an assembly—a distinction pertaining to Himself, not to the creation of perception in the angels. Thus, the hadith explicitly refutes their position as well.

This hadith is widely transmitted in the authentic hadith collections and has several chains of transmission. Among these, as recorded in the authentic collections, is the narration of al-Aʿmash, from Abū Sālih, from Abū Hurayrah, who reported the words of the Messenger of