the acts and voices of His servants through which it has reached us.

But saying “my utterance” treats the intermediaries themselves as uncreated, which is false. Likewise, if someone sees a face in a mirror and says, “May Allah honour this face and grant it life,” or “May He make it ugly,” his supplication concerns the actual face that he sees through the mirror, not the light reflected in it. Similarly, if he sees the moon reflected in water and says, “It has become full,” or “It has not become full,” he means the moon in the sky, not its reflection. Likewise, if someone hears another person mentioning a man and says, “This is a righteous man,” or “a wicked man,” it is understood that he is referring to the person designated by the name, not the actual sound heard from the speaker. If he were to say, “This sound,” or “My voice when mentioning so-and-so, is righteous or wicked,” the meaning would be corrupted.

One person used to say, “My utterance of the Quran is created.” He then dreamed that someone was beating him while he was wearing a fur coat. The blows hurt him, so he said, “Do not beat me!” The other replied, “I am not beating you; I am only beating the fur coat.” He said, “But the blows fall on me!” The other replied, “Likewise, when you say, ‘My utterance of the Quran is created,’ it is the Quran to which createdness is attributed.”

The point is this: just as your body is the intended object of the beating, while the clothing is an intermediary, so Allah’s speech is the intended object of recitation, while your voice is an intermediary. Thus, when you say “created,” that description applies to the intended object. Similarly, if you hear someone mentioning a man and say, “I love this man,” or “I hate this man,” your words refer to the person intended by the name, not to the voice of the one mentioning him.

For this reason, the imams said: “The Quran is Allah’s speech, uncreated, in whatever way