But if he means that He, glorified and exalted is He, is before anything described as “before,” this is impossible, for He, glorified is He, is Himself described as the First, before everything. If he means that time is the measure of action and motion, and that this is impossible in eternity past, he already knows that the leading authorities of religions and schools of thought dispute this with him, despite the agreement of the religious communities that Allah created the heavens and the earth in six days.

As for his statement:

“Letters and sounds are two means of expressing the meaning subsisting in Allah’s essence, just as a person expresses a request within himself—sometimes with his fingers, sometimes with his tongue, and sometimes with his head—when asking someone to leave or to come. This is the true doctrine and the sound course.”

The response to him is:

There are several objections to this.

The first is to ask: What is this meaning subsisting in the essence? Is it one single meaning, as al-Ash'arī says, which, according to him, is what the Torah, the Gospel, and the Quran signify, what the Verse of the Throne and the verse on debt signify, and what Sūrat al-Ikhlās and Sūrat al-Kawthar signify? Or does it consist of multiple meanings?

If he adopts the first position, its falsity is self-evident. He should then be told: Assenting to something presupposes conceiving it. We cannot conceive of this, so explain its meaning to us; then discuss the proof for its existence.

If he says, “It is analogous to the meanings existing within us,” this statement would be false even if we set aside whatever likening and comparison of Allah to creation it might entail. For the meanings within us are many and varied. As for a single meaning that is a command to do everything commanded and a statement about everything spoken of, this is inconceivable.