attributes of perfection for Him, supposedly to avoid likening Him to creation, only to attribute imperfection to Him and liken Him to inanimate and lifeless things.

The same applies when someone says, “This is Allah’s own speech, His very speech,” or, “What is in this written copy of the Quran is Allah’s very speech, His own speech,” and similar expressions. When used without qualification, Muslims naturally understand these expressions to mean that it is His speech, not anyone else’s, and that nothing has been added to it or omitted from it. For someone who transmits another person’s words and writes them in a document may add to them or omit something, as people commonly do in much correspondence involving kings and others.

Thus, when a letter from the ruler arrives and someone says, “What it contains is the ruler’s very own speech, without addition or omission,” this means that the scribe has neither added anything to it nor omitted anything from it.

Likewise, when someone quotes an imam’s discussion of a particular question from one of his works, it may be said, “These are the very words of so-and-so,” meaning that the person quoting them has neither added nor omitted anything. As the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“May Allah brighten the face of a person who hears a hadith from us and conveys it just as he heard it.”

By “conveys it just as he heard it,” he did not mean conveying it with the very movements and sounds through which he heard it. Rather, he meant relating the hadith accurately, neither adding anything to it nor omitting anything from it. In this way, he conveys it just as he heard it. The person listening to the transmitter thus hears it just as the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said it, and has thereby heard the speech of Allah’s Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, just as he spoke it. This is what people mean when they say, “This is his very speech,” and, “This is his own speech.”