in Arabic. Whatever Allah has spoken subsists in Him; it is not something created and separate from Him. Thus, the letters that make up Allah’s most beautiful names and His revealed Books are not created, because Allah spoke them.

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Some later scholars then disputed the letters found in human speech. Their dispute arose for two reasons.

The first is that they did not distinguish between speech that Allah Himself utters and that is heard from Him, and that same speech when someone conveys it from Him and it is heard from that person. The Quran is Allah’s speech: He spoke it, both its wording and its meaning, with His own voice. When reciters recite it, however, they do so with their own voices.

When a reciter says:

“All praise is for Allah, Lord of all worlds,
the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful,”

the speech heard from him is Allah’s speech, not his own, yet he has recited it with his own voice, not Allah’s voice. The speech is the Creator’s speech, while the voice is the reciter’s voice. As the Prophet (may Allah Most High bless him and grant him peace) said:

“Beautify the Quran with your voices.”

He also used to say:

“Is there a man who will take me to his people so that I may convey the speech of my Lord? For Quraysh have prevented me from conveying the speech of my Lord.”

Both hadiths are reliably established. He thus made clear that the speech he conveyed was the speech of his Lord, and he made clear that the reciter