and someone who falsely says, “It was cast into my heart,” “I was inspired,” or the like. The “first category” includes someone who says, “Allah said to me,” “Allah commanded me,” “Allah agreed with me,” “He said to me,” or the like, on the basis of fancies or inspirations he experiences within himself, without knowing that they come from Allah. Indeed, he may know that they come from Satan, as was the case with Musaylimah the Liar and others like him.

Then Allah Most High says:

“Or someone who says, ‘I will send down the like of what Allah has sent down.’”

This describes someone who claims that human beings can produce the like of Allah’s speech, or that this speech is human speech arising from its author’s exceptional qualities and powers, so that, with sufficient effort, another person could produce its like. This includes those who say that the Quran can be matched, such as Ibn Abī Sarh during his apostasy and various scattered individuals. It also includes the Sabaean philosophers—hypocrites and unbelievers—who claim that the message of the prophets is speech that emanated to them, and that its like may emanate to others. Such a person would thus have sent down the like of what, according to the messengers, Allah sent down. For someone who says, “I will send down the like of what Allah has sent down,” may say this without believing that Allah has sent down anything, or he may say it while believing that Allah has sent down something.

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For this reason, the first person to openly deny Allah’s speaking and His taking a close friend was al-Ja‘d ibn Dirham, in the early second century AH. The scholars of Islam—such as al-Hasan al-Basrī and others—ordered