speech or incapable of it. If He is incapable, He is mute; if He is capable but does not speak, He is silent. As for the Kullābiyyah, speech, in their view, does not fall within the scope of His power, so they cannot appeal to this argument.

It may therefore be asked: This argument establishes the beginninglessness of speech, but does it establish the beginninglessness of a particular speech that is not by His power and will? Or does it establish that He has always spoken by His will and power? The former is the position of the Kullābiyyah; the latter is the position of the early generations, the leading scholars, and the people of hadith and Sunnah.

The answer is that it establishes the latter, not the former. For speech subsisting in the speaker’s essence without his will and power is neither intelligible nor known, and judging something presupposes conceiving of it. Thus, whoever invokes this argument should be told: Neither you nor any rational person can conceive of speech subsisting in the speaker’s essence without his will and power. How, then, can you establish by rational evidence something that cannot be rationally conceived?

Furthermore, your statement, “If He did not possess the attribute of speech, He would possess the attributes of muteness and silence,” is intelligible only with respect to speech consisting of letters and sounds. For a living being who lacks these is not speaking: either he is capable of speech but does not speak, in which case he is silent, or he is incapable of it, in which case he is mute.

As for what they claim to be “inner speech,” it is not intelligible that someone who lacks it would thereby be silent or mute. Thus, even supposing that it exists, it does not follow that whoever lacks it must be silent or mute.