Thus, if He were to create speech in the tree—“Indeed, I am Allah; there is no deity except Me”—that would be the tree’s speech, and the tree itself would be saying, “Indeed, I am Allah; there is no deity except Me, so worship Me.” This would be like the speech uttered by people’s skins when their owners ask them, “Why have you testified against us?” They will reply, “Allah, who causes all things to speak, has caused us to speak.” Likewise, the Most High said, “And We subjected the mountains to glorify Us along with David.”

If His speaking meant that He created speech in something other than Himself, then all speech in existence would be His speech, since He is its Creator. Indeed, the proponents of divine indwelling among the Jahmiyyah explicitly stated this, as in the verse attributed to Ibn ‘Arabī, the author of al-Fusūs and al-Futūhāt:

All speech in existence is His speech;
Prose or verse—to us it is the same.

It is known that when Allah creates knowledge, power, movement, or will in a particular entity, that entity is the one that knows, has power, moves, or wills. Thus, if His speech were nothing but what He creates in something other than Himself, that other thing would be the one speaking it. This is discussed at length in its proper place.

The well-known specious argument of those who deny divine speech is that they believed “speech” to be an attribute that can exist only through an act subsisting in the speaker. Thus, if the Lord spoke, attributes and actions would subsist in Him, and they alleged that this was impossible.

They said: “For we inferred that the world came into being only by establishing that bodies came into being; and we inferred that bodies came into being from the accidents subsisting in them—that is, their attributes and actions. If attributes and actions subsisted in the Lord, it would necessarily follow that He too had come into being, and the proof by which we established that the world came into being and that the Maker exists would be invalidated.”