one expression be applied to the other. But if one speaker originated the statement and the other merely followed his pattern and example, the wording and speech are attributed to the first. This is like someone quoting Labīd’s words:
“Indeed, everything apart from Allah is vain,”
or his words:
“One whom you have not provisioned will bring you news,”
or quoting a familiar proverb, such as:
“Perhaps al-Ghuwayr harbors misfortunes,”
“Your own hands tied it, and your own mouth inflated it,”
or “All the game is in the wild ass’s belly,” and similar sayings.
Such a person has uttered these words to express his own intended meaning, not to convey someone else’s words. Nevertheless, they remain attributed to their original speaker. The same applies to the letters found in Allah’s speech: even when people incorporate them into speech of their own, they originally derive from the speech of Allah Most High.
The first group said:
There are two points here. The first is the claim that everyone whom Allah has enabled to utter these letters has learned them only from Allah’s speech or from someone who learned them from Allah’s speech. This universal claim requires evidence. For Allah’s teaching Adam the names, or His revealing His scriptures in these letters, does not entail that these letters had never been uttered by anyone other than Adam who had not heard