The first was their assertion: “The meaning is Allah’s speech, but the Arabic Quran is not Allah’s speech.” The Muʿtazilah used to say: “It is Allah’s speech, and it is created.” These others, however, said: “It is created, and it is not Allah’s speech.” For one of the principles of Ahl al-Sunnah is that when an attribute subsists in a subject, the corresponding description applies to that subject. Thus, when speech subsists in a subject, that subject is the one speaking it, just as a subject in which knowledge and power subsist is knowing and powerful. The same applies to “motion.”

This was among the arguments they used against the Muʿtazilah and other Jahmiyyah concerning their assertion: “Allah’s speech is created; He created it in certain bodies.” They replied to them: “If that were so, the speech would belong to the body in which He created it. The tree would then have been the one saying:

‘Indeed, I am Allah, Lord of the worlds.’”

The leading scholars of the Kullābiyyah therefore said: “If the Arabic Quran is created, it cannot be Allah’s speech.” A group of their later followers said: “Rather, we say that ‘speech’ is a term shared by both abstract meaning and ordered letters.” The critical scholars replied: “This undermines the very basis of your argument against the Muʿtazilah. For if you concede that what is truly Allah’s speech cannot subsist in Him, but only in another, the Muʿtazilah can then say that His speech is nothing other than what He creates in another.”

(Second was their assertion: “That meaning is command, prohibition, and statement, and it is the meaning of the Torah, the Gospel, and the Quran.” Most people of reason said: “The falsity of what they have said is self-evident to reason.”