that form the building blocks of His names which He has uttered, it does not follow that what they themselves bring into being is uncreated.

“In short”: whoever considers that the unvarying essence of a letter exists in Allah’s speech, and that Allah’s speech is uncreated, says that it is created, referring to the essence of the letter itself—not to the particular component of an utterance pronounced by disbelievers and polytheists. For that letter, which is a sound of determinate measure, or a determination of sound, subsisting in a disbeliever or polytheist, cannot reasonably be said to be uncreated. It is not attributed to Allah in any respect. What is attributed to Allah is only that which shares its designation and relates to the meaning attributed to Allah.

This is unlike the letters in Allah’s speech: those remain Allah’s speech whatever forms they take. Since Allah has made His speech easy upon our tongues, we are able to utter His speech, but through our own organs of speech and with our own voices. Yet our uttering it and its being heard from us are not like Allah’s uttering it and its being heard from Him, as indicated earlier. Just as nothing is like Allah, so too with everything else attributed to Him.

However, since Allah enables us to speak through our own organs, movements, and voices, a certain resemblance exists between some aspects of our uttering His speech and our uttering other speech. When we utter other speech, it resembles, in some respects, our utterance and vocal recitation of the Quran; it does not resemble Allah’s speaking it and His reciting it. Thus, if the occurrence of these letters in human speech is not on a par with Allah’s speaking the Quran, but only resembles, in some respects, our speaking it