And jurists say, concerning the implications of what is stated and what is left unstated—that is, what the Lawgiver, Allah and His Messenger, has stated and what has been left unstated—that sometimes the unstated case has a stronger claim to the ruling than the stated case: this is concordant implication. Sometimes its ruling differs: this is contrary implication. Sometimes it resembles the stated case: this is pure analogy.

Thus, the Sunnah and consensus establish that Allah is described as being silent. Silence, however, sometimes means refraining from speaking, and sometimes means refraining from making speech manifest and known. Thus, in the two Sahīh collections, Abū Hurayrah said:

“O Messenger of Allah, tell me: during your silence between the opening declaration of Allah’s greatness and the recitation, what do you say?”

He replied: “I say: ‘O Allah, distance me from my sins as You have distanced the East from the West.’”

The hadith continues.

Abū Hurayrah thus described him as silent and asked him, “What do you say?” He replied that he spoke during his silence—that is, his silence in the sense of not speaking aloud or publicly.

Yet neither of these two familiar meanings of silence is compatible with the position of those who say that He possesses speech just as He possesses knowledge, but does not utter anything when addressing His servants; rather, He creates in them a perception by which they hear His eternal speech, whether that speech is said to be an abstract meaning or meaning and letters. This is the position of Ibn Kullāb, al-Ashʿarī, and those jurists, hadith scholars, and Sufis, among the Hanbalīs and others, who hold this view.

These people must therefore either reject attributing silence to Him—which is their best-known position—or use the term and explain it as His not creating in created beings a perception through which they hear the eternal speech. Yet the scriptural texts