Such a person should be told:

This speech to which you have referred existed before this reciter was created. Suppose, then, that the reciter himself had never been created, and neither his actions nor his sounds had ever existed. How does it follow that the speech itself, which existed before him, should be nonexistent when he is nonexistent and come into being when he comes into being?

If, in calling it created, he is referring to this reciter’s own actions and sounds, then the Quran has no need of this reciter and existed before him. Thus, this reciter’s nonexistence does not entail its nonexistence. But if he is referring to the speech that people learn from one another, then this is the speech sent down from Allah, which Gabriel brought to Muhammad and Muhammad conveyed to his nation. It is Allah’s speech, which He Himself spoke. It cannot, therefore, be created. For if it were created, it would be the speech of that in which it was created, not Allah’s speech.

Moreover, if speech became His speech merely because He—glory be to Him—created it, then whatever He caused any speaker to utter would be His speech: the glorification uttered by mountains and pebbles, the testimony borne by skins—indeed, all speech in existence. This is the position of those who advocate divine indwelling, who say:

“All speech in existence is His speech;
To us, its prose and verse are alike.”

Whoever says that the Quran is created faces one of two alternatives: either he makes all speech in existence Allah’s speech, or he holds that Allah does not speak anything at all. In the latter case, he makes servants who speak more perfect than Him and likens Him to idols, inanimate objects, and lifeless things—like the calf that neither speaks to them nor guides them to any way. He will thus have fled from affirming