a man who writes the name of Allah—blessed and exalted is He—and hears someone mentioning Allah speaks truthfully when he says, “This is my Lord.” If he were asked, “Do you worship this?” he would answer, “Yes”—because the reference is to the One designated by that name. Do you not know what is written?

In connected speech, a name is intended to refer to the one named. Thus, when He says:

“Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and those with him,”

the meaning is that the person whose name is Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah—not that the actual spoken expression or written form is the Messenger of Allah.

This gave rise to the dispute over whether “the name” is the one named or something other than it. The correct approach was to disallow both unqualified assertions and instead say what Allah Most High said:

“To Allah belong the most beautiful names,”

and what the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“Allah has ninety-nine names; whoever enumerates them will enter Paradise.”

Those who stated without qualification that the name is the one named basically meant that the name refers to the one named, and that mentioning the name points to its referent. When a servant says, “I praised Allah, called upon Allah, and worshipped Allah,” he means only that he worshipped the One designated by this name.

Those who denied this considered that the actual spoken expression or written form is not identical to the entities designated by it. Others distinguished between naming and the name: they treated the spoken expressions as the naming, and the entities designated by those expressions as the name. They thereby departed from the established usage of the language in which the Quran and Sunnah came.