, has power, has knowledge, and speaks those words. The quality created in that subject is not an attribute of the Lord of all worlds. Rather, the Lord Most High is described by the attributes that subsist in Him, not by those He creates in other created beings. Thus, He is the Ever-Living, the All-Knowing, the All-Powerful, the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing, the Merciful, and the One who speaks the Quran and other speech, by virtue of His life, knowledge, power, and speech that subsist in Him—not by virtue of any of these qualities that He creates in others.

Whoever holds that His speech is created must consequently say that a created being is the one who said to Moses:

“Indeed, I am Allah. There is no deity except Me, so worship Me and establish prayer for My remembrance.”

This is impossible: these words can only be the speech of the Lord of all worlds. If Allah has spoken the Quran, the Torah, and the other scriptures, with their meanings and their words composed of letters, then none of that is created; rather, it is the speech of the Lord of all worlds.

Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal was told that so-and-so said: “When Allah created the letters, they prostrated to Him, except alif, which said, ‘I will not prostrate until I am commanded.’” He replied: “This is disbelief.” Thus, he rejected the claim that letters are created, because if letters as a class were created, it would follow that the Arabic Quran, the Hebrew Torah, and the other scriptures were created. This is false and contrary to the position of the early Muslims and the imams, as well as to rational and scriptural evidence, as has been explained at length elsewhere.