the Quran is four phrases, which are also part of the Quran: Glory be to Allah, praise be to Allah, there is no deity worthy of worship except Allah, and Allah is the Greatest.” Muslim narrated it in his Sahīh.

He thus stated that they are the best speech after the Quran, while also saying that they are part of the Quran. They are therefore part of the Quran in one respect, but not in another. If someone says:

“O John, take the Book,”

intending Quranic recitation, he has spoken Allah’s words, and his prayer is not invalidated, by scholarly consensus. If he also intends thereby to alert someone else, his prayer is not invalidated according to the majority of scholars.

But if he says to a man named John, in whose presence there is a book, “John, take the book,” this would be created speech. Here, the name John refers to that particular person, and “the book” refers to that particular book; he does not intend what Allah intended by His words:

“O John, take the Book.”

This is the created being’s speech, in both its wording and its meaning.

People have disagreed over what “speech” fundamentally denotes. Some say it denotes the wording that conveys a meaning; others, the meaning conveyed by the wording. Others say it denotes each of the two as distinct meanings of the same word. Yet others say that it is an inclusive term for both together, encompassing both when used without qualification, although, when qualified, it may refer sometimes to one and sometimes to the other. This is the position of the early generations and the leading jurists, even though this position is not acknowledged in many books.

This resembles people’s disagreement over what “the human being” denotes: is it the soul alone or the body alone? The correct view is that it denotes both the soul and the body together, even though