in something other than Him has stripped Him of perfection and likened Him to lifeless things. The same applies to whoever does not affirm that He speaks by His will; or affirms that He speaks by His will and power, but regards speech as one of the created things and describes Him by His creations; or holds that He became a speaker after not having been one. Although each of these positions affirms some truth, it also rejects some truth and detracts from the perfection that Allah deserves.

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Each of these groups has grasped some truth concerning the degrees and kinds of speech. The same applies to “the second principle,” namely, our utterance of Allah’s speech.

The Book, the Sunnah, and scholarly consensus establish that what Muslims recite is Allah’s speech, not the speech of anyone else. If someone were to say that a single letter or meaning within it was not part of Allah’s speech, or that it was the speech of someone other than Allah, and the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, or any of his Companions heard him say this, it would be known with certainty that they would respond to him as they responded to people of denial and misguidance. Indeed, people universally agree on the same principle regarding all speech.

Thus, all people who know that the verse

“Indeed, everything apart from Allah is vain”