rational and non-rational beings, dividing human beings into Muslims and disbelievers, or dividing nouns into inflected and indeclinable nouns—and dividing a whole into its parts, as in dividing real estate among co-owners or dividing speech into nouns, verbs, and particles. In the first case, the divisions share only a universal concept; still less could the Creator and created beings share anything existing in external reality. None of Allah’s attributes, as they exist in external reality, is like an attribute of a created being. Rather, everything attributed to the Lord Most High differs in definition and essential reality from what is attributed to created beings, far more than created beings differ from one another. If a created being differs from some other created beings in the definition and essential reality of its essence and attributes, then the Creator’s difference in essential reality from every created being is greater than the difference between any two created beings whatsoever. Nevertheless, His knowledge is knowledge in the true sense, His power is power in the true sense, and His speech is speech in the true sense, just as His essence is truly an essence and His existence is true existence. He is more deserving than all else of having the attributes of perfection truly affirmed of Him.

This, then, is what we mean when we say, “His knowledge shares with the knowledge of created beings the reality of knowledge.” Thus, the voices heard from His servants bear no resemblance or likeness to His voice as Moses heard it, except in the same sense in which His other attributes bear resemblance or likeness to the attributes of created beings. This concerns His own speaking of the Quran, glorified and exalted is He. According to Imam Ahmad and all the other imams of the Sunnah, the Quran is His speech, which He spoke. He spoke the Arabic Quran with His own voice, and He spoke to Moses with His own voice, which is unlike any of His servants’ voices.