And “another group” said: “We say that Allah’s speech which He has not sent down is uncreated. As for the Quran which He sent down to His Messenger, and which Gabriel, Muhammad, and the believers recited, it is created.” These are the “Lafziyyah.”

The Muslim community therefore turned to its imam at that time for help, and Ahmad would tell them: “The Jahmiyyah have split into ‘three groups’: one says, ‘The Quran is created’; another says, ‘It is Allah’s speech,’ and says nothing further; and another says, ‘Our utterances and our recitation of the Quran are created.’”

What this last group’s position really entails is that the Quran which Gabriel brought down upon the heart of Allah’s Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, is a created Quran which Allah did not speak. Their specious argument rested on the fact that our actions and voices are created, and that we recite it only through our movements and voices. Some of them might even say: “All we have are our utterances and our recitation. There is no Quran on earth other than this, and this is created.”

They were opposed by people who intended to uphold the Sunnah but fell into innovation. They answered falsehood with falsehood and countered one unsound position with another, saying: “Our recitation of the Quran is uncreated, and our utterances of it are uncreated, because this is the Quran, and the Quran is uncreated.” They failed to distinguish between what an unqualified designation denotes and what a qualified designation denotes, or between the referent considered on its own and that referent when coupled with something else and qualified.

Imam Ahmad therefore also condemned those who said that people’s recitation, reading, utterances, and voices were uncreated. He ordered that they be shunned, just as he had declared the former group to be Jahmiyyah and innovators. And reports from him