good deeds, up to seven hundred, while he is punished for wrongdoing—if he utters or commits it—as the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said:

“Allah has pardoned my Ummah for what they say within themselves, so long as they neither utter it nor act upon it.”

As for the verse attributed to al-Akhtal:

“Speech indeed lies within the heart;
The tongue was only made to reveal the heart.”

Some have denied that this belongs to his poetry. They said that they had searched his collected poems but had not found it. This is reported from Muhammad ibn al-Khashshāb. Others have said that its wording is: “Eloquence indeed lies within the heart.”

If someone were to support an argument with a hadith from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, recorded by both compilers of the two Sahīh collections, they would say, “This is a solitary report,” even if it were a report that scholars had unanimously affirmed as true and received with acceptance. Yet the transmission of this verse from its purported author has not been established through even one sound chain, let alone more than one, nor have scholars of Arabic received it with acceptance. How, then, can it establish even the slightest point of language, let alone what the term “speech” denotes?

Furthermore, it may be said: What is denoted by “speech,” “saying,” and similar terms is not something for which one needs to consult a poet’s words. Speakers of the language, from the earliest generations to the latest, have used these terms and understood their meanings in their language, just as they have understood what “head,” “hand,” and “foot” denote. Moreover, the evidence supplied by speakers of a language lies in their use of words to convey their meanings, not in what they state