The servant’s soul is created, while his speech is beginningless, and the attributes inhering in him, such as his faith, are beginningless. Their fellows explicitly state that his acts are beginningless. This goes beyond what is affirmed of the Lord Himself, for He, glorified be He, is beginningless and eternal, whereas His acts occur anew, one after another. Likewise, He has always spoken by His will, one utterance after another.

These people maintain that the servant’s soul is beginningless, as is light—the light of the sun and moon, lamplight, and every other light. In claiming that human souls and lights are beginningless, they have echoed the position of the Magians and “the Sabian philosophers” who resemble the Magians. Some Sabians do indeed resemble the Magians, as al-Hasan al-Basrī and others stated when they said of the Sabians: They are like the Magians. These are a class of polytheistic Sabians, not among the Sabians praised in the Quran.

The point is that their claim that the spirits and “souls” of human beings, which depart from their bodies, are beginningless is of the same kind as the claim that the soul is beginningless, discussed earlier. However, these people regard them as being from Allah, since, according to them, nothing is beginningless except Allah and His attributes. Their claim that light is beginningless is of the same kind as the Magians’ position, except that they also regard light as one of Allah’s attributes.

All these claims—that the servant’s soul, words, acts, or sounds are beginningless, or that the light of the sun and moon and similar things is beginningless—are ramifications of that underlying premise. For the “early generations” said: The Quran is the speech of Allah, uncreated. A group supposed that they meant it was beginningless and had always existed. Since the Quran consists of letters and sounds, they concluded that it must be beginningless; and what is heard is the Quran