rather, it is another kind of presence. Anyone who fails to give each mode expressed by locative language its due—distinguishing a body’s presence in a spatial region or a place from an accident’s presence in a body and an image’s presence in a mirror, and distinguishing seeing something with the eyes while awake from seeing it with the heart while awake or asleep, and so forth—will become confused about these matters.

Likewise, asking whether what is in the written copy of the Quran originated in time or is eternal without beginning is an ambiguous question. First, the term “eternal without beginning” has not been transmitted from the early Muslim generations. Rather, what they agreed upon is that the Quran is Allah’s speech, uncreated. It is Allah’s speech wherever it is recited and wherever it is written. It is one Quran and one speech, even though the forms in which it is recited and written vary: the voices of His servants and their ink.

For speech is the speech of the one who originally spoke it, not of the one who transmits it. Thus, when we hear a hadith narrator relating the Prophet’s words, may Allah bless him and grant him peace:

“Actions are judged only by intentions,”

we say, “This is the speech of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, in both wording and meaning,” although we know that the voice is that of the transmitter, not that of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. The same applies to anyone who transmits another person’s speech, whether poetry or prose.

When we say, “This is Allah’s speech,” referring to what we hear from the reciter and see in the written copy of the Quran, we are referring to the speech itself, setting aside what accompanies its transmission: the transmitter’s voice and the scribe’s ink.