If, then, this distinction is intelligible in the speech of created beings—between hearing speech directly from its original speaker and hearing it through someone who transmits or conveys it from him—how could it not be intelligible when hearing Allah’s speech? It has already been explained that anyone who thinks that what is heard from the reciters is the Lord’s voice has more need of the discipline given to the insane than of discourse addressed to rational people. Likewise, anyone who imagines that the voice is eternal, or that the ink is eternal, holds a view that no person of sound perception would express.

Rather, what lies between the two covers of the Quran is Allah’s speech. It is Allah’s speech, not anyone else’s, that is recorded in the Muslims’ copies of the Quran. Whoever says that what is in the written Quran is not Allah’s speech but someone else’s is a heretic and a renegade. Whoever claims that Allah’s speech has departed from His essence and passed into something else when written in copies of the Quran, or that the ink is eternal and without beginning, is likewise a heretic and a renegade. Even the speech of created beings is written on paper without departing from their persons. How, then, could something similar not be intelligible concerning the speech of Allah Most High?

“Confusion” in matters like this arises because some people do not distinguish between unqualified and qualified statements. For example, a person says, “I saw the sun, the moon, and the crescent,” when he has seen them without an intermediary. “This is unqualified seeing.” He may also see them in water or a mirror; this is “qualified seeing.” Thus, when he simply says, “I saw it,” or “I did not see it,” his statement is understood according to the unqualified meaning of the expression. But if he says, “I did indeed see the sun in water and in a mirror,” this is a correct statement with that qualification. The meaning of an expression varies